Camp Lessons & Products

There were a few great items that got us by while on our travels, and the lack of facilities and light packing taught me some great lessons along the way too.

Anyone that knows me knows that I am a shower-every-night type of gal. I hate going to bed without being clean. I "put my face on" almost every single day, even if I'm not going anywhere. I floss every.single.night. And much to my husband's dismay, I totally use "face stuff" aka a layer of protective zit cream before bed each night. BUT when you're camping in the woods with no mirror, no running water, a lack of desire to carry extra weight, not wanting to use products that might damage the environment, and in locations where it's luck to have an established hole in the ground to do one's business.....then you sort of throw your "normal" tendencies out the window.

I packed a small ziploc that stayed in the truck and contained the following: two bobby pins, a small bottle of face lotion, a small bottle of Burts Bees outdoor body & hair wash, a tiny packet of foundation and a foundation brush, a tube of chap stick, a tube of fix-all ointment, black eyeliner, floss, and my leftover nub of a cover-up stick. I also had a stick of deodorant and my Burts Bees facewash in my bag. However, in my hiking pack, I had more bobby pins, "natural" bug repellent, my toothbrush, and another tube of lip balm that I figured could be used for a couple functions.

So here's the irony, I packed almost nothing for this trip.....and it was rare that I even used what I brought. In fact, on the backpacking part I used basically none of it. I rinsed my face with running water from the stream morning and night and I washed my feet in the stream before bed. I did run my toothbrush over my teeth, but without paste because I didn't want to leave the paste behind in the woods.

Once we got to the second camp site and were camping out of the truck, I still didn't use anything extra, except this time I did floss and I did use toothpaste since I could deposit them into one of those holes in the ground (aka an established outhouse....).

In fact, thanks to the magnificence of baby wipes (again only deposited into the outhouse) used just to clean (TMI) my swimming suit region, I didn't even mind not showering for three days. Yea I was dirty and I'm pretty sure sweating into the same shorts for three days put off an odor, but it really wasn't all that bad. THANK GOD FOR BABY WIPES though! ;)

Even once we could shower again and were back in civilization, I only put on the little amount of make-up I had when we met friends and the dry mountain air actually seemed to be great for my skin.

The second irony of our trip is that I had only intended to not be camping for one day---meaning I packed all hiking clothes/shoes and only one pair of jeans, one regular wear Tshirt, and one pair of light-weight flip flops....so I ended up wearing the same jeans, shirt, and flops for three and a half days in a row. We washed our hiking clothes while at my parents, but somehow I actually didn't mind wearing the same outfit---definitely made choosing what to wear a whole lot easier...

Beyond the clothes and personal care products, I did get introduced to some great hiking and camping gear. (You have to understand that I didn't really grow up camping, before this I'm pretty sure I'd only legit tent camped maybe, maybe 5x.) Since hub spent the last two years pretty much camping and running around in the woods half of every month thanks to the Army, he's got some pretty neat stuff:

This is the Jetboil pot. Great for heating up water in a flash and great for backpacking since its small and lighter weight. Image found here. We used this to heat water for cocoa, to fill our kanteens for warmth in the foot of our sleeping bags at night, and to cook our meals. We did decide that we need to get a legit camp stove however for when we're cooking & camping out of the car.

Hub recently found a water purifying device apparently called the SteriPEN. It uses UV light to kill bacteria and viruses. Its light weight and is similar to a lighted wand you stir like a stick in a stream-filled water container. His bud and he used it on their longer backpacking trip without any illness, and we used it on this trip too. You can read about it here and the image was taken from here.

I had my first introduction to freeze dried food from a PNW company called MountainHouse. We ate the Macaroni & Cheese, which hub thought was amazing for freeze dried food and which tasted almost exactly like box mac n cheese. The more I thought about it, I'm pretty sure box mac n cheese must already be some sort of freeze dried. We also had the freeze dried ice cream sandwich which was A-MA-ZING! Image from here.

Two days before leaving on our trip we found a sleeping pad for me. We settled on a Thermarest Trail Scout that was on sale at our local Sports Authority. It was definitely comfortable (much more comfortable than hub's Ridgerest basic light weight!) and with enough padding to separate me from the cold ground. Image from here.

One item that we used at the second camp site which we also string up in our backyard is hub's camp hammock. It actually can be used for sleeping and its incredibly simple to hang up and take down. The whole thing stuffs into a tiny little sack and its also light weight. It's the ENO Doublenest Hammock and the image is from here.

Some of the other camping and hiking gear was stuff hub had from the Army, including a sleeping bag and backpack. As usual our Klean Kanteens were awesome, although hub did also use one of his old Nalgenes (hello BPA exposure.....).

One thing I do have to rave about were the Eddie Bauer shorts I recently found on sale that were fabulous. I'm not a huge shorts person, but these seemed great for hiking and have proved to be quick to dry and easy to move around in. They have great pockets on the sides to hold IDs, chapstick, and a thin camera without being weighed down. I'm pretty sure they are these, although they seem to hit me shorter than they appear in the picture.

Hub and I also snack along the trail when we need a burst of energy and while most of our snacks consist of apples or dried fruit & nuts (cranberries & almonds are a fav, but we've recently added another lil bag of dried apricots and cherries), we discovered Nature Valley's new Oats N Dark Chocolate granola bars on our last Costco trip. They were delicious, made the fastest breakfast possible, and provided great energy to get me through a few more miles. Hub also made white chocolate chip-cranberry-coconut oatmeal cookies that we ate while camping. Unfortunately I left our other great Costco hiking grub at home---peanut butter filled pretzel bites!

Some great gear, snacks, and camp lessons!