My wife and I had been planning on taking our 3 year old daughter and dog with us backpacking for the first time and we finally found a time to make it work.
I cleared all my afternoon meetings off my calendar in anticipation of leaving early and hitting the trail by 5 pm. So we left the house promptly after I got off my last work call at 6 pm . With unexpected traffic in Ellijay, that resulted in getting to the trailhead at 8:30 ahead of a 9 pm sunset. Managed to get camp setup in the dark, cook dinner for the family, hang the bear bag (honestly was shocked by how much food needed for this trip), test out porch mode with my first pair of hiking poles, and put everyone down to bed. I left the UQ off until midnight when it finally cooled down enough to not be excessively hot. Woke up shortly thereafter to quite the incident with my dog and the dutchware pup tent we got for him. This was his first night in it and he somehow pulled all 3 stakes out of the ground and 70 lbs of lab wrapped in tent still attached by bungee cord was crashing around in the middle of the night. Put quite a few holes in the mesh screen in the process which I'll now have to figure out how to repair . Once that got settled and the dog calmed down, I laid down and next thing I know it's 9:30 in the morning. Probably the best sleep I've ever had.
Next morning we were slow to rise and I got some fishing in while the family did breakfast. I got lucky to only get stung by 1 hornet when I went thru a soccer ball sized nest without realizing it until I was 20' past it and got stung in the back. I turned around to see what I'd done and booked it up the creek ruining the good fishing hole. The creek rewarded me with a fish shortly after. Not wanting to press the luck, I headed back to camp for breakfast. Here's a picture of camp before we tore it down and hit the trail
Now with a 3 year old, we didn't exactly tear up the miles, but what time we did spend on trail was fun and fast. We were to our second camp and setup by 2 pm.
After making lunch, our daughter went down for a nap to put the "how to stomach sleep in a GE hammock" question to rest. The dog decided he liked the pup tent after all.
Meanwhile I went to catch some brook trout. There aren't many fish around prettier than a brook trout with the flashy orange belly. It was nice to have the daughter come running when I showed back up. Back at camp afterwards we had dinner, fire, and s'mores (maybe that's why we had a 20 lb bear bag).
In the middle of night, it started to rain. Boy howdy did it rain. The good news is the tarps kept everyone dry. I was a Nervous Nelly all night because we were miles from the trailhead with gear that's only been rain tested by the hose in my backyard. There was no sense worrying about the rain, though, because not a drop of rain got on any of the quilts not that we needed them because I was still sweating even when I packed them away later in the night because I was uncomfortably warm. I didn't sleep that well partly from the worrying and partly from it being too warm. In retrospect, I should've just packed the quilts away way earlier and stopped worrying about everyone when I could hear snoring from the other 3 over the rain. Oh well, there's worse things than watching it rain in the forest with the tarp in porch mode. When morning came, I made breakfast for the family from the comfort of the hammock under close supervision of the dog still asleep in the pup tent. A little mesh repair and putting him in doggie boots next time so no repeats.
We tried waiting out the rain, but by 11 am, we tried making a dash for the trailhead in light sprinkles only to get stuck in a torrential downpour that soaked thru my frog togg rain gear. I loved packing up everything under the tarp while staying super dry, but reality hits when it goes in the pack and you're putting everything out in the elements. All 4 were pretty soaked when we got to the car. No pictures of that part of the adventure as it was less than ideal.
Definitely some lessons to be learned about temperature and moisture management. Everything performed as it should besides maybe my rain gear which was fine for around camp. The humidity did seem to significantly decrease the loft on my quilts. I was still way too warm and I'm not sure there's anything else I can do considering they were already protected by UQP and no rain or splash was getting in. Looking back, I'm wondering if the effect was caused by my own moisture contributions (nowhere for the moisture to go if it's 100% humidity on the outside of the UQP). Obviously not problematic at these temperatures, but could've been if it were raining and in the upper 30s, low 40s (which I've slept thru with the exact same gear no issue). I'll keep getting better the more I go and I'm new to down gear, so there's a learning curve there.
Similarly, I was a proud dad watching my daughter tend the fire and keep it going all on her own for a while. This was her first backpacking trip and hopefully more to come, but she's probably been camping more already than most kids do in their whole childhood. It's good to see her already picking up some outdoors skills from the car camping trips. Probably my favorite moment was taking her to a spot where I'd caught a brook trout and staying way back from the water so she could see the trout feeding in their natural habitat. She claims her favorite was Daddy making her and mommy breakfast. She had a great attitude about hiking out thru the rain and only got scared by the creek crossing which frankly would've been even sketchier if we'd stayed. I think she'll remember this trip for a while and that's pretty good in my book.
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