Monday, July 11, 2011

Hot.

Home-bound heat index today: 105. Wind: travel-speed tailwind. Not a good combo. Fortunately, I keep Gatorade mix at the office, and got it nice and cold for the commute.

I got to scope out Middle Creek Fishing Lake over the weekend. This is where we'll be camping on July 30th. I can only imagine that it could be just as hot that weekend as it was today, or worse. I went fishing out there on Sunday morning, and caught a whole cooler full of bupkis. Mostly, I was checking out to see how viable it would be for a bike camping trip. I think it'll work great, but like I said last week: we'll actually be roughing it.

The whole park is gravel. But that shouldn't put too much of a damper on things.


Toilets: Brick shelters with a roof. Urinal and a hole in the ground. Wasps abound. Bring your own TP and hand sanitizer.

Sinks and showers? What sinks and showers? "Adult Skin Cleaning Cloths" -- essentially grown-up baby wipes are a favorite among commuters that don't have showers at the office. I can't imagine it'd hurt to bring some of those along. You can find them at the drug store.

Water? There's lots of it, but it's all in the lake, and the stuff I saw had twigs, algae, spiders and mosquito larvae in it. I will try to call Rutlader Outpost (a nearby RV park) and ask if they have water we can use (or buy?) but I decided it was high time to pick up a backpacking filter system of some sort.  I went with something similar to this Sawyer Water Filter (but with a transparent blue bottle) that I found at Walmart for half the price of anywhere else. How's it work? How about I show you with my mis-aligned camera, stammering case of the "umms" and fidgety hands?



That was some 36 hours ago, and I'm not sick... yet...

Honestly, it tasted just like the Brita filtered water I drink at home. I really should have boiled it first, but at 0.1 micron, there are only a few things that can make it through with the water, and most of those things aren't a problem here in the United States, even in grimy lake water. I'll probably properly boil the water at camp before filtration. I also found a way to pump water through it by pressurizing the bottle through the ventilation hole. I'll be more than happy to share while we're at camp if others need some purified water.  I'm sure others will also be willing to help.

Random Tunage:
The Prodigy - Fire
Andain - Promises (Myon & Shane 54 Summer Of Love Mix)

1 comment:

Apertome said...

Hot here too. 111 head index on my way home yesterday.

Sounds like that should be a fun camping trip -- hope it cools off before then.

I have a Katadyn Hiker Pro backpacking water filter that I use for things like this. It works great and I haven't gotten sick when I've used it, and I've filtered from a variety of sources.

It's great to have some sort of water filter around. Very handy for trips like this one. Though one camping trip had no toilets of any kind, and no nearby water source to filter from. Fortunately that was a car camping trip so we just brought lots of water, but on a bike it could have been problematic.

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