Ben made a decision about a week ago that eating meat was uncivilized, so our menu was vegetarian...supper on Friday night was pasta shells with pesto sauce...
It was sunny but cool, and the pond was very cold, but Ben and I went in for some wading...afterwards we started a fire, with Ben elected as chief poker...
We both slept the night in our Hennessy Hammocks...it was windy and got down to about 35 degrees the next morning...Ben and I both love sleeping in them though...they are really comfy and it is fun to rock in the wind...
The next morning we got a fire going quickly as soon as we got up, and filled up with some hot food...oatmeal and cocoa...once the fire and food had warmed us, it began to look like a nice day, and we made plans...
We were the only ones camping on Little Green this weekend, we didn't even see anyone else...
I had brought a pond sampling net and tray, and we had lots of fun scooping and playing...Ben especially loved this crayfish...
We also hiked down to the far end of Little Green, where there is a spillway and fish barrier dam, to keep the pond separated from other adjacent ponds...in the space between, we found a huge colony of a variety of waterbugs...Ben caught them all for further study...
Later on in the morning it started to rain, so we drove over to the nearby Adirondack Fish Hatchery, which raises Atlantic Landlocked Salmon, for release into ponds and streams all over New York...Ben loved feeding the fish, even getting brave enough to handfeed the salmon, some of which were 18 inches long...
After lunch, we hiked out to Rat Pond, which is a pretty little pond along some train tracks which are only used a couple of times each year...Ben loved that on the way home, despite my reassurance that the trains almost never come, we could hear the whistle of the train coming towards us...
We got back to camp between rainstorms, and did some more pond sampling, this time finding 2 crayfish, including one that was almost big enough to be called a lobster (not really)...
The weather started to close in again, and as the rain started falling and the wind was blowing, I noticed that Ben was shivering a bit...we had gone through many changes of clothing, what with rain and pond playing, and by the time we had finished supper I could tell that his last change of dry and warm stuff was not cutting it...we still had a few hours before bed, and the night promised to be truly cold and windy, so I made the call to go home...
Ben was very unhappy with me for ending our camping trip early, but seemed much better after a warm bath...given that we live in the middle of all of this wilderness, there's no reason to take chances with Ben's safety/health...we'll go camping again...
I learned that I need to bring much more warm and dry clothing for Ben when we go camping, and Ben learned that he needs to alert me to being cold and/or wet before it gets serious...
When I went back today to break camp, I noticed this tree that has rotted all the way through, but still has a full spread of leaves...
PS - I also noodled around with a cell-phone and direct blogging, and you can see the results here...
1 comment:
Thanks for the report! I appreciate the sharing of such a wonderful experience.
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