Think Camping

"Thoughts are creations," a friend once told me. I am not sure that is exactly true but surely thoughts lead to creations (or 'destructions', as it be).

The aging process has afforded me a reverence toward thoughts in general. There is something mystical about them. Once I was swinging my granddaughter, Emily, at the park. She was sitting in the swing and I was behind her so she was looking exactly the opposite direction from me as I was pushing the swing from behind. I looked at the water bottles, we had brought with us, and was thinking to myself a drink of water would be good. She turned her head back toward me so I could hear her shout "if you are thirsty papa you should just go get a drink". I know she either pulled that thought right out of my head or I sent it to hers!

Perhaps, the best example of this 'thought telepathy' is when two people are intently trying to remember the same thing, like maybe the name of an actor. They might be pondering, who was that other guy that starred with Mel Gibson in " We Were Soldiers"? Seconds pass....nothing, nothing, nothing more seconds pass.... more nothing, nothing, nothing then in unison both shout "Sam Elliot!". Coincidence, you say....maybe...but it sure seems to happen a lot.

I have learned if one treats a thought as if it were it's own little entity with it's own personality separate from one's own mind, at the very least it seems to create an independence from existing perceptions and prejudice thus allowing for the possibility of new ideas. Many of the innovations associated with my chuck box products were achieved this way. You learn to let the thought guide you instead of you guiding the thought. (It's harder to do than you might think. )

"Be careful what you wish for, you may just get it," is another one we have all heard. I can guarantee you, that one is true. I asked you for your opinions on the newsletter last month and boy did I get an earful. But it was a good earful. While, by and large, folks seem to be contented with the general direction of our efforts, there were also some wonderful new insights and ideas presented too.

I am still compiling and incubating that information. Therefore, we are going to hold off on the website survey till next month and by then, with any luck, I will have digested all your thoughts on what the camping-tips.com newsletter should be.

In regard to those who offered their opinions in our survey, I have one word for you:

Thank You!

OK, I guess that's two words but it is one thought and a good one at that. ;-)

Think Camping then go!

Ken

Take the medicine and we will all feel better.

You may find this hard to believe, but there actually was a time when I was a kid. Even harder to believe is that I can still remember some of the things that happened back then. For example, all internal ailments were cured with Castor oil. The theory was if you drink that slimy elixir you would pretty much puke out whatever was wrong inside. Oddly, it actually seemed to work. External problems like cuts, abrasions and lacerations required Methiolade. As kids we actually thought this was the blood of the devil himself because it would burn like hell and leave a sinister red stain on everything it touched. As it turns out, the active ingredient was iodine. Just imagine dumping iodine into an open wound. There is a word for that - torture!

No wonder, when the doctoring was over, you felt a lot better!

Not to change the subject but, metaphorically speaking, our camping-tips.com newsletter and web sites need a little medicinal treatment. This month we'll do the Castor oil (newsletter) and next month the Methiolade (websites). Five months have gone by in 2009 and this makes the fifth newsletters to go out, I am proud to say. Now I know you are not going to want to do this but I really need to know what you think about our camping community content. Then we can use your opinions to improve newsletters, videos and websites.

There aren't any essay questions and I don't even grade them so you can't fail '. :-) So pleeeease take our little camping survey ( It's less than 20, mostly multiple choice, questions.)

You'll feel better and so will I but mostly I'll bet you will find our content gets better over time with your input.

Thanks - Ken

Go Camping ( After you do the survey ;-)

Forget the Swine - Go Camping!

I take a week off to go turkey hunting and come back from the woods to find the swine have all but overtaken us. I'm not talking about the flu, I'm talking about the press. There is a pandemic happening all right, but it's not a disease it's a press feeding frenzy. It is so bad my president felt compelled to say "Cover your mouth when you cough." Don't they teach that in kindergarten anymore?

Our vice president says don't fly because you have to breath that recirculated air? A plane is diverted to a landing because someone has flu like symptoms? Our press has taken compulsion to new hipes, I mean heights. I have four words for them - GIVE ME A BREAK ! And find some real story to report or take a vacation if things are that slow. But please, don't go turkey hunting, you might get shot.

After all, a lot of bad things 'could' happen. Let's see, we have the possibility of an E.L.E. meteor, a nuclear holocaust, global warming and, my grandmother's favorite, you could poke someones eye out if you don't put that stick down!

All I can say is I am sure glad it isn't a turkey flu. It took me six years to get drawn for spring turkey which is my favorite hunt because it follows those long hard winters we have here in Camp Verde Arizona. It got all the way down to freezing several times this winter and it even threaten to snow once! Think of the havoc that could have wreaked - cars sliding into ditches, potential power outages and your ears could get cold too.

I have actually had the flu, several times in my lifetime and while it certainly wasn't any fun, I never felt like it was on the same level as small pox or leprosy. I guess that shows you what little I know about such things. Ignorance truly is bliss.....I guess.

I'm going back to the woods. I have never seen a turkey sneeze.

Go Camping!

It's spring!

The lizards are back! The return of the reptiles is the sure sign that spring is here. In Arizona, early spring makes for some great camping although one does have to be mindful of the wind and the potential rising waters in those normally tame creeks.

It's also the time to get your camping equipment checked out . Of course, a backyard campout is a great way to do that. ( The smaller kids like these as much or more than the real thing. ) This is the way to work out all those wrinkles in your camping routine and get your crew trained. There are few things in life that provide more of a sense of accomplishment and teamwork than setting up a campsite (if you are good at it ;-).

I am really wanting to do a Clear Creek (shown above) backpack hike this spring. That is the best kept secret in Arizona hiking. It's a nice easy hike with all sorts of interesting topography and critters. Only problem is the trail crosses the creek four times which means you can get yourself in real trouble if it rains on the snow at the higher elevations.

The other spring trip I need to do is to gather some video for my upcoming nighttime entertainment page on the camping-tips.com website. I am hoping to round up a few storytelling and musician friends for that one. Hopefully, there will be a new storytelling video after that trip.

Here is a little video I did a while back to help inspire you to get your camping equipment organized for another wonderful camping season.

In the meantime, may you get out this spring and catch enough giant lizards to pull your camping cart into a great year of camping.

Running Away

Have you ever felt like just running away from it all? Of course you have, that's what us tent campers do, hopefully with great regularity. We do, however, take our families, dogs and friends with us so we are actually running away 'with it all' not 'from it all'. And, my friends, this is the year we are really going to do that! Heck most of us are either out of work or headed that way anyway, so we might as well configure our lives for living in the woods. ;-)

As you may have heard me say before, tent camping has just got to be one of the cheapest forms of family entertainment you can find. Once you are outfitted, the only real additional expenses to your normal life style are vehicle and stove fuels plus a few minimal supplies like lantern mantels, batteries and such. If you stay close to home that shouldn't be a lot.

So to that 'go camping' end, have I got some cool stuff for you! I have finally got around to organizing my camping tips free pack page on our web site. Essentially, what you get is some of the standard web site content, supplemented with additional information and put in a PDF format so it's easy to print it out and thus take with you. And once you have it on paper, you can write on it. You know, cross off things you don't like in those camping recipes, for example, write in things you do, add your own, and make little side notes to augment those ever capricious memory cells in the brain.

And the big news is, the brand new, never seen before, just off the press, answer to all your prayers, "Go Camping!" organizer/calendar!!! ( It's in that camping tips free pack.) Well ok, I guess it's not that big of a deal but it's kinda cool and I'm telling you it's going to help motivate you and yours to get off that proverbial posterior and do it. This Year!

So get your 'go camping' plan together and escape to that sacred hideaway you love so much! Take pictures, tell us about your trip like Steve and his family did. ( I tried to talk him into taking me with them next time - so far he's ignoring me, though.)

Go Camping!

Ken

Goodbye 2008 - Hello 2009

Happy New Year everyone!

Seems like I just blinked my eyes and yet another year slipped into the archives of my memory banks. And what a year it was ( Yikes! :-0 ) filled with meltdowns, collapses and bailouts. The word that most describes 2008 to me, though, is "unprecedented". At least that’s the word the political and media arenas have latched on to. I heard a CNN anchor say "unprecedented unemployment numbers" followed by "not since the seventies". It would be nice if reporters would have to know the meaning of the words they choose to use. Allow me to suggest to you that there is nothing unprecedented here. It has all happened before in one form or another, to one degree or another, at one time or another, by one people or another.

Notwithstanding all those dire ‘unprecedented’ predictions, we have before us a nice, bright, shinny, pristine new year. And January is the time to reflect on what has been and plan for what will be. May you find a way to let the hope of what could happen overpower the fear of what might happen and inspire your will to drive what does happen in 2009! ( Have you ever noticed how hope and fear tend to go together? )

Here is my sophisticated two part 2009 plan for addressing the possibility of these impending dire times.

1- Keep plugging away.
2- Go camping!

Part one of this plan is perhaps more involved than might seem at first glance. It will involve new videos, new products, regular newsletters ( this is where hope over powers fear ), free ideas, revitalized and new blogs, the introduction of "some assembly required" products, a new book and the return of kits. I am telling you, with any luck at all, we are going to get our camp kitchens organized beyond our wildest dreams. Why? So we can implement part 2 of the plan.

Go camping! No matter how much of our money the politicians give away or how ‘gloom and doomy’ the predictions of the experts and reporters become, this part of the plan will work perfectly. This is where we welcome meltdowns because it means the cheese has adorn the green chili on our lunch time burger. And the consequences of our collapses means we just didn’t stake the tent well enough to handle the wind gusts. And bailouts are a blessing because that means somebody just caught a monster trout and our boat took on some water in all the excitement.

No matter how good or bad a given year might be, you don’t get a second chance to live it over. Your kids will never be the age they are right now again and neither will you. Let’s get out there and archive those 2009 camping memories. The real beauty of part two of our plan is it doesn’t require the completion of part one. You can do it anytime.

Go camping!

Ken

Permanent Forest Access Closures and Restrictions - coming soon to a National forest near you.

This is the biggest policy event to happen in the national forests that I can remember.

There is a huge proposal on the table in the Coconino National Forest that will very likely set a precedent for other national forests. All national forest are required to submit a travel management rule (TMR).

I went to one of the meetings regarding the Coconino proposal and had a pretty lengthy conversation with Jim Beards, the principle force behind this proposal.

Here are the major points of the Coconino National forest plan:

1. No off road vehicular travel except by permit.
2. Most (as defined by FR road numbers) of the roads in this forest will be closed to vehicular traffic of any kind.
3. The mechanism for closure is simply a map. No rocks, barricades and maybe not even any signs. It will be your responsibility to know which roads are closed and stay off them, else you could get a ticket.
4. You can park no farther than 1 car length from the road, except in a limited number of predesignated areas where it could be up to 100 feet. These are existing "dispersed campsites" as determined by the forest service.

My thoughts on the proposed TMR plan:

1. It's hard to find anyone who objects to banning the indiscriminate vehicle travel off roads. Most of us thought that was illegal now. I guess not. Interestingly this is the only real requirement presented to the various national forests by the forces in Washington.
2. I know it looks like there are a lot of roads out there when you just look at a map. However, on their maps, 1" equals two miles. Thus, what looks like a lot on a piece of paper wouldn't seem that way at all to someone out walking it. Also the number presented to the public was 29% closure ( as defined by linear miles). The first question I asked Jim Beards was, "how did you get that number?" to which he responded, "oh that's not correct, it's more like 40%". I would guess 60% just by looking at the maps. And in some areas it has to be 90%. It's a lot of closures.
3. Here is my son's comment on the lack of mechanism for closure. "If this goes in and there aren't any barricades, then I think you'll get a whole bunch of people not obeying/knowing about the new laws, using roads/campsites as they used to while the rest of us law-abiding citizens are bound by our morals to obey the new proposal. So we don't get to travel as we used to, nor will we truly get the benefit of the new 'road closures' because there will always be someone driving down that road that we are expecting to be closed."
4. The worst part of the whole proposal is the one car length limitation. I don't think I have ever camped as close as one car length from a road. Why? Vehicles drive on roads. They are noisy, they kick up dust and sometimes they go real fast and are thus unsafe. This one has lawsuit written all over it, the first time a little kid gets hit by a car or ATV because people are basically forced to camp by the road. Now Jim Beard said, "you can camp anywhere in the forest" you just can't park anywhere. But let's face it, if you have kids, especially little ones, you are not going to be practically able to get real far from your car.

There are two proposals now:

1-do nothing but implement restrictions on off road travel
2-this proposed plan

Given only those choices I would have to go for choice 1.

Here is What I think we should do:

1. Restrict travel to roads. (That's a 'no brainer' with perhaps some permitted exceptions.)
2. Take the roads currently designated for closure and specify them all as primitive but leave them open for 4x4, ATV, dirt bike, mountain bike use. Do not maintain them, thus they will present no strain on the budget yet will still be perfectly suited for the people who want use them.
3. Change the one car length limitation to 100 feet. Logical campsite areas will evolve out over time.
4. Establish an 800 number hot line to forest service enforcement so violators could be reported. Like the Game and Fish anti-poaching system a reward could be offered and actually paid for by the offenders fines. Judges could invoke additional community service 'clean up' sentences to those convicted of illegal off road travel, littering etc..

A mentality that restricts more and more people with more and more recreational vehicles to less and less space is counter intuitive to me. I'm all for using this TMR plan to improve the outdoor experience for all of us and protect our treasured forests. However these massive road closures and, perhaps more importantly, campsite restrictions are not the answer. We need a plan that allows for reasonable access and use and provides a effective method of dealing with those who abuse that access and use. ( I think that's the piece that is currently deficient. The 800 number could help that problem a lot.)

You have only until Sept 10th 2007 to comment on the plan. Here is the link to the full proposal with maps.

http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/coconino/projects/tmr/proposed-action.shtml

I urge you to read through this information and send your comments to :

comments-southwestern-coconino@fs.fed.us

The pure backpackers and hikers might like the idea of this plan but be careful. You may find you can no longer get to your trailhead and water cashing points.

If you are a hunter, many of your favorite source roads to get you to those favorite spots will be closed.

If you are a mountain biker or ATVer this is disaster! These closed roads take on the same status as the forest around them thus will be closed to vehicular travel of any kind.

If you are a roadside tent camper, I hope you like the idea of camping virtually 'on' the road.

It effects everybody. Speak now or forever camp on the road (if you can find one).

"Take all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum
then charge the people a dollar and a half just to see 'em
don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you got till it's gone......" - Joni Mitchell