That’s right, I’ve gotten out my shovel and dug up this community’s corpse, strapped it to the table and hooked up the lightning rod, and I’m about to throw the switch. And none of you can stop me!
This official (number 58) campsite I was in the other week turned out to be a mowed patch in the middle of the Tioga State Forest in an area which had clearly been logged fairly recently. As such it didn’t have anything to offer in the way of shade and after a long day in the saddle I was a little miffed there was nowhere to hang up my hammock. Not at least without doing an awful lot more mowing, which probably would have been seen as a bit of a faux pas. It’s in that stage of regrowth where everything is impenetrable ground cover and brambles, just a touch too opaque to still be a meadow but certainly not a forest yet.
Something about that blue sky and green verge still appealed to me, though, so I took this picture prominently featuring my dinkum Chinese knockoff tent that I use for motorcycle camping.
For a hundred bucks it’s not only been remarkably solid so far but has also even managed to remain weatherproof, plus most importantly it fits exactly in the bottom of my panniers. It’s a “Wandelen” non-brand thing, a model they purportedly call “Appalachian.” How appropriate. They claim it’s a “backpacking” tent but really isn’t — It weighs a full four pounds and the bundle it breaks down into is probably a bit unwieldy to try to stuff in your pack. It’s resolutely free standing, though, which I prefer any time I don’t have to carry the thing myself. For actual backpacking duty I stick to my Lanshan which is half the weight but needs two trekking poles and about three dozen stakes to put up.
I definitely did. That’s a consideration this time of year in any temperate zone and any time there’s going to be a drastic difference between the daytime and nighttime temperatures. At sundown I put my rain fly back on my tent and unless I’m out in the literal desert I’ve learned to always do so. Condensation settles down from above as the moisture drops down out of the atmosphere — the dew point is literally becoming lower, as in lower in altitude — so things get will wet from the top. Having your fly on means the fly will get wet, but you won’t if you’re underneath it.
Overnight it dropped to 57 despite a daytime high of 90 or 91 the areas of sun.
This also applies to all the other stuff you leave outside overnight. I.e. always remember to schlep your boots under your rain fly at night, or else be prepared to deal with damp toes. Ditto with any junk you leave lying on the picnic table.
I left my helmet on my bike overnight, and with the open end down, obviously. Here’s what it looked like at daybreak:
The mists didn’t fully burn off until quite late in the morning. The fog likes to hang around in some of the valleys and on mountainsides, especially on the north sides of things where it’s not in the sun.
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