Had a great day of sailing on the Chesapeake Bay for the Screwpile Lighthouse Regatta! I was crew on a friends boat J105 'Rakali'. J105. Winds were light for the 1st two races, but built to a nice breeze for the last race of day 1. This is us returning back to Solomon's Island after racing... The wind was great and we hit 10Kts under spinnaker off the wind. Nearby boats are Tripp 26 'Goin'', Olson 29 'Natural Disaster', and Melges 24 'Danger Paws' with Antrim 27 'Ultra Violet' further up ahead. See the race results here: https://yachtscoring.com/event_results_cumulative.cfm?eID=3027 We had a poor 1st race in the very light air and ended up performing a 'man overboard exercise' to retrieve a piece of electronics gear that flew overboard during a spinnaker hoist. Fortunately, it floated! Last race of the day we managed to pull a gun. We'll see how day 2 goes. :)
Spent a little time this holiday weekend trying out my new Zpacks Duplex Tent while doing a quick section of the Appalachian Trail in Shenandoah National Park Virginia. This time, I hiked from Elkwallow Wayside to Pass Mountain Hut. Along with being hot, sweaty, and buggy, this section of trail was exceptionally boring for me, with few views and little features of interest. Now I know where the nickname "Green Tunnel" comes form. That being said, I did see two bears and a pretty tame deer. Hiking from north to south along this section of trail, there is a spring about 0.5 miles south of the wayside. Once up on the ridge, there are a couple nice tent sites, one about 1.6 miles and the other at 1.9 miles south. There is a very good spring 4.8 miles south of Elkwallow (~2.4 miles north of Pass Mountain Hut) with a tent site right nearby (just south of the spring). These are all what I would consider legal stealth sites in SNP, being far enough away from trail, water, roads, and structures. Pass Mountain Hut is typical for the park and the site hosts a spring, privy, bear box, and bear pole near the tenting area. There are two tenting areas. I used the one behind the Hut on the other side of the very good spring.
I used 9g of Dr.
Bronner’s Organic Virgin Coconut Oil sopped up into a cotton ball and sat it on
my BGET burner under my Toaks 550 Kit from Zelph with Trail Designs Ti
Sidewinder Cone.
It took 14:46
outdoors in 82F calm weather for 2 cups of water to come to a full boil using 9g
of coconut oil fuel on a cotton ball.
Th epic fail for
this trial is the amount of soot and mess this produced. Yes, it works, but the
cleanup is NASTY! A full 1mm of flaky oily soot gets deposited all over the
pot.
Welcome to 2017 Trail Days in Damascus Virginia! http://www.traildays.us/
Last year I made a long day trip out of this and could tell there was much missed in the way of evening activities, music, and socializing. This time I spent the night Friday. I made the 6 hour drive down from Maryland and got there about 3PM. I was able to find parking in the grass lot next to One Way Ministry and it cost $20 for the weekend (in and out privileges). There was no parking in the gravel lot across the street closer to Tent City. I went over to the check in tent at the right gate to Tent City and paid my $5 for access to a camp site. The person there said that the quiet side was the open field on the left, medium activity was the woods in the middle, and the party side was on the right. I snagged a field spot and set up my tent and then explored the area. There were lots of very cool woods spots to camp, and many people hanging. Everyone was "tightly packed" to say the least. The right side looked to house very well organized camps of group affiliated hikers. Some of the camps sponsored evening activities like chili cook-offs, others had 'beer-bat'. Yellow Deli had an area to drink tea, eat food, and listen to people playing music. Everyone seemed to have a fire ring. With the weather being hot and humid, the smoke hovered in the woods and drifted around with the droves - literally hundreds, possibly a couple thousand, hikers. I spent quite a bit of time over at One Way Ministries (to eat their most excellent free food Friday night). They had chili cheeze (not to be confused with cheese) dip, all sorts of brownie like things, and ice cream on cobbler. Tables were set up inside and there were plenty of great people to talk to. Got to meet and talk a little with 'Optimist and Purple Mist' who have an outstanding YouTube site 'Harper's Tarry' for their 2016 hike! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUBLpcrrFJ25jo0uZ1pVG3g
I also ate 'all you can eat $5 pancakes' there the next morning. Once the sun went down, things got crazy. People were partying everywhere, and the songs, cheers, music, and 'odd smelling smoke' filled the air. The giant camp fire ring for the super crazy tribal bongo dancing was set ablaze (in a fairly unsafe explosive manner) and the dwindled as what looked like senor fire starters had to bail the rookie crew out. Saturday was vendor and parade day for me. Plenty of parade spirit to go around, as well as at least three drones. I'm looking forward to finding the drone footage when it gets posted. Half way through the parade it rained hard. A persistent rain cell crept over our area and it became nasty (and thankfully cool). I ran into Dollar General, who happened to have $6 golf umbrellas!! It was time for me to finish up and drive back home. Just as I got to the car, it started to hail...and hail pretty hard. It pretty much hailed hard the whole way on the drive to I81.
It's always fun to recognize and meet people I know from YouTube, or have met on the trail in the past, at Trail Days. Big hello to Optimist, Purple Mist, Logo The Blackalachian, Odie, The Real Hiking Viking, and Red Beard.
Don't forget to order your hiker yearbook! http://hikeryearbook.com/
In memory of Joe Moraski, a friend of mine who passed unexpectedly last week. He was an antenna god, an artist, a technician, a sculptor, a great chef, a writer, a sailor, a philosopher, a hunter, a fisherman, a Mensa, a mentor, and a friend. http://www.traildays.us/ https://www.facebook.com/onewayministriesdamascus/ https://onewaydamascus.com/outreach/trail-day-ministry/
This is the Appalachian Trail from Elkwallow Wayside north toward Gravel Springs Hut. Along the way, we summited Rattlesnake Point and also found a couple great campsites about half way to Gravel Springs Hut with excellent water. We also found the southern terminus of the Tuscarora Trail. The Tuscarora Trail bypasses a large section of the AT and rejoins with the AT on Blue Mountain in PA. The trail was developed as a backwoods alternative (backup) to the AT prior to the passing of the National Scenic Trails Act of 1968. Information on the Tuscarora Trail can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuscarora_Trail
Welcome to Battle Creek Cypress Swamp in Calvert County Maryland! This is the northernmost stand of cypress trees in North America. There is a nice little county park with a Nature Center that is a fun place to visit. The boardwalk trail is very easy and only about 0.4 miles round trip. There are some stairs descending to the main boardwalk trail that people with knee or walking issues may have difficulty with. The cypress here are Bald Cypress. There are quite a few in the swamp and their knees are very cool to look at. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Creek_Cypress_Swamp http://calvertparks.org/bccss.html http://calvertparks.org/Resources/Documents/ParkMaps/BattleCreekCypressSwampMap.pdf
