Suit up for the ultimate summer camping trip with these essential items

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/14/suit-up-for-the-ultimate-summe.html

I’ve never before seen a tent from which I could fall and hurt myself.

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Our local library has wifi ‘hotspots’ to use on road trips or camping.

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I actually own the knife shown, which has a striker and seatbelt cutter and flashlight.

The flashlight is garbage, but overall it is a great knife to keep in your car. I use it as a bait knife most often.

It is worth every penny of the 11 dollars I bought it for.

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I did some hammock sleeping with a rain fly over it for a few months back in the day. Comfy, portable and no wet ground.

Not sure that my back is up to it anymore.

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Blurred face on that person looks weird, in an slightly upsetting way:

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Were you a Boy Scout @anon75430791? Scouting has sure changed since I was a kid. We’d do good deeds but leave the EMT Stuff to the professionals. What kind of firld trip would you go on where you’d need a window punch and a seatbelt cutter?

And that’s a good thing, because all I can see is someone potentially girdling trees that are having a hard enough time just hanging onto that cliff edge.

Doesn’t that get too cold to sleep in really quickly?

I was young- and not out after December. Great in other temperatures.

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My back finds a hammock easier than hard ground! You need to learn how to lie diagonally. Modern camping hammocks have an asymmetrical cut to make it easier to find that sweet angle where you’re not bent like a banana. (It’s not that difficult, actually.)

In warm weather, you can get away with a foam pad under you. In colder weather, you use an underquilt. Once you have a suitable underquilt, you wind up throwing away the pad.

There are lots of pieces of good advice over at https://www.hammockforums.net/. It’s tricky getting started, but the really dedicated hammockers will help you every step of the way - they’re missionaries out to convert the world!

Disclaimer: I’ve not yet really switched from being a Wookiee (sleeps on the ground) to being an Ewok (sleeps in the trees), just tried a short trip or three. Once you have a lightweight system dialed in, it’s hard to make single changes because every piece of gear serves multiple purposes, so it winds up being an expensive and annoying proposition, getting a different system rigged. In particular, I’ve not got the gear budget to set up a deep-winter (nighttime temperatures <-5 F or <-20 C) hammock system. Still, eventually, my back may force me into making the change.

My back is injured - and I have some levoscoliosis. Not a deal breaker previously- now - it’s not a matter of learning how to lay down

Whatever works for you. If you’re more comfortable on the ground, the ground is right there. From what I see on the trail, the Wookiees still outnumber the Ewoks by a substantial margin.

I don’t, to the best of my knowledge, know any backpackers with scoliosis. Several that I know with disc problems swear by their hammocks - one’s even set one up inside his house. That’s why I don’t rule out a hammock - but as I wrote earlier, I’m not ready to tweak the whole rest of the system to accommodate it for most trips.

Eagle scout, in fact.

None. I keep it in my car, where such tools might be useful in a random moment.

Yep. Gay kids are allowed. Gay leaders are allowed. Predatory scout leaders are not allowed.

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Doesn’t Nostradamus mention something about people sleeping on floating thongs amongst the green towers? It’s one of the overlooked quatrains.

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