Rx-ipe: A Walk in the Park

A few weeks ago my brother, two of our friends and myself went backpacking/camping for the weekend in Allegheny National Forest. This isn't pay 10 bucks for a campsite, buy some firewood and set up a tent next to your car. We pack up our backpacks with hopefully enough supplies to last us the weekend, hike in to the forest, say this random spot looks good for a campsite, and don't look back until the end of the weekend. Over the whole weekend we hiked about 7 miles, and our resident woodsman friend, Arko, claims the change in elevation from the lowest part of the trail to the highest part is over 1000 feet. I love a weekend like this. For me there's nothing like leaving behind everything for a weekend and just being in nature, out in the wild. We had a great time, got way to drunk Friday night, didn't think we would move from our first camp site Saturday morning, but had reviving swim in the a river and actually ended up hiking for 3-4 hours Saturday afternoon to a new campsite.

One of the best parts of going camping like this is, cooking over an open campfire. Who said you can't cook well in the wild, on Friday we had deer burgers (the deer caught and butchered by Arko last fall) prepared by Boz, and a deer stew that I threw together (I brought 2 onions, some baby yukon gold potatoes, garlic and some beef stock), oh yeah and a chocolate peanut butter cake that I brought, that as I was opening dropped icing side down on the ground. Saturday was a more traditional camp food day with hot dogs, bratwurst, and beans. I know for sure that the burgers were some of the best burgers I ever had, but by time the stew was ready I think I as well as everyone else were a little too drunk to know what the stew really tasted like (from what I can remember though it was pretty tasty).

One funny story, on the car ride to the forest we talked about how we had to hang all of our left over food and anything an animal (bear, bobcat, mountain lion, other carnivorous animals) might come around to forage, in a tree. My brother who worries about those kinds of things says there is no way he would get drunk enough or too tired to make sure everything was secured in a tree before we went to bed each night, well take a look how he passed out Friday night,

yeah he was ready for an attack (that is quite a spear, eh), that is if he would even be able to hear and be roused by anything in his drunken stupor. Somehow we did at least all manage to make it in to our tents that night. I guess a whole bottle of goldshlager, some Jim Beam Red Stag, vodka, some more of a different kind of whiskey and a 12 pack of Natty can have that effect on four campers.

The most amazing tank top ever (nothing better than a goofy outfit a manly camping trip)

The weekend was great though, we didn't run into much of any wildlife (we saw a salamander and a deer), ended up making a the whole 7 mile hike, and got to check out an absolutely amazing look out over the whole forest. This was my second time doing this camping trip in the summer, now were planning a trip for the late fall as well as a winter trip. We want to see how different the forest is in each of the different seasons.