First trike camping trip was Wonderful

[nualle]

Ewan and I took our first ever hammock camping trip by trike this week (7-9 October 2019). We lucked out that the first few days of the week I took off work coincided with the best weather we've seen yet this fall in Minnesota.

Monday, after a leisurely breakfast, we packed up the trikes -- a Greenspeed Anura tandemed to a SunSeeker EZ-Tri Classic, pulling a BicycleREvolution trailer. Ewan grew up camping; I didn't. Ewan did most of the trip planning but we had done most of the gear research together over time. On our budget, it takes a while to gather enough gear for a single trip.

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The ride from our place in South Minneapolis to Lebanon Hills Campground took us the whole middle of the day. GoogleMaps calls it 17.5 miles along the eastern route we took. We neglected to take sufficient notice of the elevation changes. Gotta say, some of Eagan's hills felt gratuitous. But the slight chill in the air was the perfect counterbalance to the miles we put in. We stopped for lunch and to shop for our camping meals, then got to the campground in good spirits by threeish in the afternoon.

Lebanon Hills Campground is the perfect place for a camping newb like me to cut her teeth. The RV area is well separated from the tent camping area we were booked into. Our spot was quiet, except for the unfortunate, and surprisingly consistent, road noise. Still, we heard plenty of birds -- way more than we do in town. We set up our hammocks.

Though Minnesota doesn't lack trees, we had kinda expected the groomed campground might not have trees of the right sizes in the right places to be useful. TensaOutdoor to the rescue! I have a Tensa4 and Ewan has two TensaSolos. The TensaSolos need more anchoring, so that's what we did first. And ran into our first technical difficulty. Minnesota has had a record wet year, and it showed in the soil we had to stake into. We couldn't get one of the TensaSolos staked in well enough to take Ewan's weight. One of the aluminum tube stakes we were using bent. Grr. We packed up that pole and used a nearby tree for that side, then used the freed-up tieout cord to reinforce the remaining pole.

My Tensa4 had no such problems. I might have canted it pretty severely foot-side up but it worked fine for me. The orange screws that came with it held like champs. We both have Warbonnet Blackbirds from a few years back, and Arrowhead New River underquilts. Ewan's tarp is a Warbonnet Cloudburst. They and the Tensas are our investments. The rest of our gear was more cobbled together. Ewan's topquilt is a modified Slumberjack sleeping bag we were given when we got married, sometime last century. My top insulation is a monster homebuilt by marrying an AHE Alpine Blanket I must have gotten on sale to a Faribault wool throw blanket I'm pretty sure was a second. It is a marvelously warm monster, and not much heavier than the slumberjack. My tarp was the ENO. At that point, I just needed to get something, and I found it at RepairLair on Lake St. Great place, that.

Time for dinner and relaxing! Hurray for a Trangia stove! We both love how quiet it is.

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A few problems cropped up in the night. A raccoon tried to get into our trailer. Glad Ewan locked it up! It did succeed in tearing the red reflectors off the back. It lost interest in them, though, and left them, so we could tie them back on and use them coming home. Another was that the 3-season AHE underquilt still left Ewan with chillybutt, despite the mild night. We don't think the temp fell below 45*F. But now we know to equip Ewan warmer. The worst problem was another aluminum tube stake failed, causing catastrophic failure of the other TensaSolo. Ewan fell to the ground, improvised a ground cloth out of trash bags and jackets, and slept the rest of the night like that -- reportedly warmer, lying on the underquilt. I slept like the proverbial baby except for a bout of chilly feet I solved by getting fetal.

Tuesday dawned and I found out about Ewan's fall. I also gave my setup a good look around in the light and discovered the UQ's propensity to slide around under the hammock. I used the ribbon intended to tie the bugnet down open to tie the UQ in place. That solved my chilly feet issue. I had to pull it up a couple of times on the access side, but that's much easier.

We decided to use the ENO tarp as Ewan's ground cloth and bivy cover and set up both of us under the Cloudburst. That situation worked fine. I worried a little about what could happen if my foot tether failed, but that never happened. The ground was plenty soft for Ewan and I still got my hammock comfort, and we also got some of the sociability of tenting together. It's been a long time since I've had a two-nap day and this was my first ever while camping. We had three Trangia-cooked meals and a lovely wood fire in the evening. What luxury!

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Wednesday, we both woke up leisurely. We had breakfast leisurely. And we left the campground a little regretfully. 17.5 hilly miles is more than we're used to and we had that ahead of us again, with only a day's rest between. But the day was gorgeous and we had all day to get home. It did take us a bit longer to take the shorter, more direct route home. But my goodness, what a beautiful place we live to ride through. The Minnesota River just south of Fort Snelling would be worth seeing just for itself. It was a treat to pass through it getting home from camping.

[cricky101]

Sounds like a fun trip. I took my then four-year-old camping there once and we had a good time. There were concerts happening at the Minnesota Zoo in the evening though and we were close enough/they were loud enough, to be able to understand lyrics.

[Shug]

Trike trip. Sound fun. I'd like to hear more about the failure of the Tensa Solo. Was it the boom stakes? Boom Staking can be tricky. See it at 3:25 into video below.
Putting your parka or jacket over your feet in hammock can help prevent chilly feet.....https://youtu.be/seqBY9VM1bs
Shug

[Latherdome]

By tube stakes, i think you mean Tensa Boomstakes? If so this is the first report of failure we’ve heard. Please drop us a line direct with details, photos if possible. We’ll replace failed materials. Our documentation for the Boomstakes is nearly nonexistent now, but coming together. It is important to run the guylines long, so there’s a fairly shallow pull on the booms.

If you can find one tree, you can split a Tensa4 into 2 halves to hang 2 people without Tensa Solo’s strong ground anchoring requirement.

[nualle]

cricky101: That still sounds like a good time with your bairn. We were fortunate to be there very nearly off-season. The campground closes end of next week. No concerts, except by the local geese, and maybe some jays.

Shug and Latherdome: Here's a pic of what I'm calling aluminum tube stakes:

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They're aluminum tubes, hollow inside, and closed to stakes at one end. As you can see, we've had a problem with them bending under stress. The one that failed actually broke through. Ewan threw that one away before either of us thought to take a pic of it. Anyway, it's not the Boomstakes you sell, Latherdome, which look to me like Alamosa Anchors. The Tensa4 and Tensa1s we bought from you all worked wonderfully. But we bought the Tensa1s without the staking hardware, because we had some stakes lying around. Silly us.

We have some bigger, thicker aluminum tubing that we intend to drill through to make Alamosa Anchors with, but the trip snuck up on us and now we're sorta glad we didn't yet. We intend to trade up to using titanium stakes (like these) and we'll want the holes through the bigger aluminum tubes to be smaller to work with those thinner but stronger stakes.

Here's a bad pic of the setup we tried. You can sorta see two of the four guylines across the green coolerbag on the table. Three of the 4 lines were guyed to those aluminum tube stakes -- you can see one shining below the yellow trike's seat. I might have cropped the pic a bit too high. You can barely see the first line angling from the Tensa1 to the ground. The second is the one that ends at the shiny stakehead. The third was behind the yellow trike, and the fourth was tied to the picnic table. The one that failed was the first one, nearest the photographer (me). The other three didn't keep the hammock up.

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The one using that hammock was Ewan, who you can see cooking there. All of 150# or so, so weight shouldn't have been an issue. Just a combo of stupid stakes + too-wet ground + inexperience. Next trip, we'll be even more cautious and hopefully also have better gear.

[nualle]

[...]If you can find one tree, you can split a Tensa4 into 2 halves to hang 2 people without Tensa Solo’s strong ground anchoring requirement.

Half a Tensa4 and a tree is a superb idea that we'll play with for future trips. Ewan didn't mind the ground, I still need a hammock, and we like being under the same tarp.

[Latherdome]

I shouldn’t feel relief that “it wasn’t us!” but i have to cop to some. Yes, the anchor strength required for Solo can’t be overstated. Those Tito stakes are good, and currently we resell them as part of our Boomstake offering. If you want to DIY booms, strongly suggest you use steel or at least 7000-series aluminum in 3/4” OD with well-reinforced holes: they tend to tear. We epoxy in smaller diameter tubing to reinforce the holes.

Those aluminum stakes might suffice for anchoring Tensa4. I’ve used tarp stakes! That way you can use the Orange Screws for at least one side of Solo.

[nualle]

Entirely understandable! Thanks for the advice on the booms. We've got plenty to think on before gearing up for our next trip.