Starling Travel

During our disappointing stay at Tahiti Village, I realized that I was a different person because of my camping experiences.

We had spent half the day fighting with the hotel staff trying to get the Internet to work in our hotel room. We were there to write for The Gadgets Page about CES, so having the Internet was ESSENTIAL. If they hadn’t been able to get it to work for us, we would have had no choice but to get a different hotel.

Our Internet was working (FINALLY) and it was time to go to bed and we realized that the heat wasn’t working in our room. The temperatures had fallen in Vegas and the room was unpleasantly chilly. Mike asked me, “Should we call the front desk?”

After dealing with the uncaring staff all day, I could envision our journey toward getting a room with heat. Firstly, they would send the same poor, incompetent fellow to our room who had handed us a blue CAT5 wire as if it were a dirty worm. After an indeterminate amount of time banging around on the furnace in our bedroom, he would tell it was fixed, when in actuality, now it was broken AND noisy. Then we would have to decide if we wanted to change rooms and deal with the whole broken Internet issue again.

It sounded like an exercise in frustration when all I wanted was to sleep. I said, “It’s warmer in here than in the tent. I’m just going to live with it.” And honestly, I knew I could. As cold as that room was, it was warmer than our night in the tent at Lake Mead in November, and I survived that without an incompetent maintenance man clanging around in the room.

Going camping and braving the elements changes you in ways that you might not even notice. When our basic needs were met, in this case, Internet connectivity, we knew we’d be alright. A little mildew smell and water that tastes contaminated is par for the course when we’re camping. Lack of heat and the ability to see my breath is nothing new on a frosty morning in the tent.

The next time you’re camping and the cold tempts you to pack up your tent and head for the nearest hotel, remember my horrible stay at Tahiti Village and be safe in the knowledge that camping feels so good because it changes you.

This video of Betty White talking about camping in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada brought tears to my eyes:

When she talked of her memories, I choked up:

“I still at night, now, I’m an old lady, and if I can’t sleep at night, I go back and I relive those times and I can smell that air. I can hear the wind in the pines. It’s where my soul is.”

This video is even better. She talks about her childhood desire to be a forest ranger.

“As a kid, I didn’t want to be a princess or any wonderful movie star or anything like that. I wanted to be a forest ranger with all my heart. And back in those days, girls couldn’t be forest rangers. I remember on all those wonderful wilderness vacation that we would take, my dad always wore a forest ranger hat. It was his… thing. This last year, I am so thrilled that the Forest Service called me to Washington and made me a honorary forest ranger. So when they… the ceremony that they had, all of a sudden they came up with a forest ranger’s hat, and all I could think about was my dad. This always meant vacation to us in the summers. When I’d see that hat.”

Next time you’re shivering in your tent, thinking that you really should have stayed in a hotel, remember Betty White remembering her father and all those lovely camping trips in her late years. Knowing that you are building unique memories to last the rest of your life might take a bit of the nip out of the air.

Via: Who Knew? Betty White Has Wilderness In Her Soul

I just finished watching The Long, Long Trailer. It’s a funny movie starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz made in 1953. It’s about all the problems of traveling with a trailer. Desi is an engineer who must travel for his work and Lucy decides that they should live in a large trailer instead of living out of hotels.

Here is an introduction:

It’s worth watching just for the beautiful cinematography of Yosemite National Park. Vincente Minelli must have had a bit of a crush on Lucille Ball, because he makes her look more lovely than she ever did before or after.

After seeing the two of them suffer through the difficulties of driving a large trailer, getting stuck on muddy trails and winding their way along treacherous mountain roads, I was very happy to just throw the tent in the hatchback instead.

If you have ever considered buying a trailer, make sure you watch The Long, Long Trailer. It will cure you of your trailer fever and you’ll happily pitch your tent instead.

Camping food runs in two very different veins. One is better than food you can eat at home and includes things like meat cooked over the campfire, s’mores and dutch oven cobblers. The other is food that doesn’t taste as good as food at home, but it’s light or easy to make. The Mountain House Scrambled Eggs and Bacon definitely fall into the second category and after a week of eating them on our trip to Quartzsite, Arizona, I am glad to get back to freshly cracked eggs on my stove at home.

Utah is a Mecca for freeze-dried food, so all I had to do was drive to the nearest survivalist store to find a large can of the eggs. I had tried a small package of them to verify that they were palatable and I was ready to get SIXTEEN servings in a big package for our upcoming trip.

Their estimate of sixteen servings, is a little optimistic. Each serving is 2/3 of a cup, but that serving is a tad small for a breakfast. Unless you’re supplementing it with something else, a healthy adult isn’t going to feel ready to start their day on that serving. I ended up using one cup servings and that worked much better for me.

I can’t complain about the ease of use. All I had to do was boil water, add it to the serving of eggs, stir and wait ten minutes. It was FAR easier to store the eggs, even though I had enough servings for the two of us to last all week. to do the same with fresh eggs, it would have taken half our cooler.

No matter how long I left the eggs in the hot water, however, they never reached the proper texture for eggs. They were large and fluffy, but they didn’t chew quite right. They always felt a little crunchy, even if I left them in the water for fifteen minutes. There was always a little bacon flavored water left over in the bottom of the bowl. That’s because I usually added more water than they recommended in the desperate hope that the eggs would miraculously have the texture of fresh eggs. The water at the bottom gave me the impression that I was eating egg soup, which strangely was okay with me and I gladly lapped up the tasty water out of my bowl at the end of my meal.

The smell of the eggs was good. It had a liquid smoke scent that I supposed came from the bacon bits. I came to enjoy the scent of it each morning, but Mike said it was disgusting. Of course, he refused to even try them, so I couldn’t really take his opinion into account.

Scrambled Eggs with Bacon is really a misnomer. I would have named it Scrambled Eggs with Bacon Bits. Strangely, most of the bacon bits sunk to the bottom of the can, so the later servings had more bacon than my first few breakfasts. No matter how much bacon, I had in my bowl, however, I wouldn’t really consider it enough to warrant inclusion in the name of the food. Maybe a better name would have been Bacon-Flavored Eggs.

Would I eat them again? Yes, most definitely. They made my camping breakfasts easy and trouble free. Instead of worrying about cleaning pans, all I had to do was boil some water. In fact, since we had electricity at our campsite, all I needed to do was turn on my little electric kettle. The fact that they are so portable and easy make them the best thing for a camping breakfast.

Would I eat them at home? Probably not. As easy as they are, they just don’t taste good enough to eat at home when I have a fridge full of fresh eggs to choose from. If we were in an emergency situation (such as the local populous worry about constantly), then I would be grateful that they were available, but as long as I have easy access to fresh eggs, an electric stove and a dishwasher, there is absolutely no reason to dip into that can.

It seems that the more I look at camping trailers, the more interesting things I find. For example, the Fold-N-Roll Trailer. It was created in 1996 by Irv Perch, the original founder of Aristocrat Trailers, but they are a far cry the from canned ham design of his past.

It’s not as pretty as an old Aristocrat trailer, but you can’t argue with its utilitarian design. Unlike the A-Frame trailers or even the TrailManor trailers, the Fold-N-Roll unfolds entirely differently. The top slides up and over, creating a sloped roof on the front and a handy awning over the door on the back.

It was easy to find photos of the trailer in its extend position, but I could only find one photo of it closed up. It looks like a clunky and awkward mess to me.

When compared to the streamlined design of this 1959 Aristocrat trailer, the Fold-N-Roll looks like a monstrosity.

What it lacked in beauty, it more than made up in utility. It was equipped with a queen-sized bed, a separate dinette and a full bathroom. And it all folded down into an ingenious bit of trailer origami.

Sadly, the Fold-N-Roll was not long for this world and are no longer made today, so if you want one of these babies, you’ll have to find one on the used market. With gas prices as high as they are, a small trailer that folds so compactly, yet opens up into such a roomy space is exactly what most people need.

See more photos after the break: (Continue Reading…)

For longer camping trips, I make sure that we stay at campgrounds with a shower. Having the luxury of a daily shower makes camping in a tent nearly as good as staying in a hotel. The daily trek to the shower, however, can be difficult when I have to carry the shampoo, soap, my change of clothing and towel.

I struggled with that before I remembered my most excellent beach towel tote. I originally bought this towel for lying out in my backyard. It’s a LONG towel that folds into a bag. I can put my clean clothes in the towel, my shampoo and soap in the pocket and hang it on the hook that most campground showers have. I can keep it hanging on the hook while I dry myself with the long towel tail while my clean clothes stay safe in the bag. Even if it falls off the hook, the bag protects my clothes as long as I grab it quick before the clothes get wet.

When I first bought this towel, I was pretty disappointed because the terry cloth was SO thin. Compared to my regular beach towels, it felt like it was half the thickness. That cheap terry cloth, however, has been a godsend in humid climates. It will dry quickly if I hang it up in the tent. I’ve even taken this towel on cruises and it dries in the cabin, even in the most humid of locations.

The pocket to the right of the towel is supposed to hang off a beach chair and can be used to hold your gadgets or magazines. I’ve never really used that pocket, even though I thought I would. The towel is so light that anything in that pocket pulls it off the chair when you stand up. When I’m drying off in the campground shower stall, that little pocket is just a bit of extra towel for me and nothing more.

The tote portion of the towel usually fits nicely over the top of a beach chair and keeps my towel from rolling down my back when I’m trying to relax. That feature works really well and I’ve had my towel stay in place even when the wind picks up. When I’m camping, I don’t use that feature. Instead, I use that pocket to hold my clothing up and away from all the water.

The pocket on the front is perfect for holding my shampoo, soap, razor and any other toiletries I need in the shower. I would have liked it to have a zipper so that things don’t fall out of it. I lost a bottle of sunscreen out of that pocket somewhere in Roatan, so now, I’m extra vigilant when I put things in there to make sure they don’t slip out. A zipper would prevent that. I’m thinking of adding a zipper to that pocket just for my own peace of mind.

I bought my towel at my local grocery store on the seasonal aisle, but I found a few towels on Amazon that look similar.

• Beach Chair Cover Includes Terry Inflatable Pillow Cover Converts to a Beach Tote- Red: This one looks the most like the one I own, except that it includes an inflatable pillow. Bonus!
• Terry Cloth LOUNGE CHAIR COVER Pool Beach Deck YELLOW: This one doesn’t SHOW how it converts into a tote, but it looks very similar to mine.
• “ITSA” ULTRA-THICK 82″ TERRY VELOUR LOUNGE CHAIR BEACH TOWEL WITH 6 SIDE POCKETS, ZIPPERED LOWER POCKET THAT CONVERTS INTO A BEACH BAG!-PINK: This one looks similar as well.

Martha Stewart has a tutorial showing how to make a tote of your own:

• Beach-Towel Tote Bag – Martha Stewart Crafts

The handles are down the middle instead of along the sides, so I think this one might not be as comfortable to use on the lounger because one of the canvas handles would be poking you in the back instead of hanging along the back of the chair like mine does.

After seeing Martha’s inept attempt, I decided to make my own camp/beach towel tote, using some beat up and ratty bath towels that I retired to the rag pile a couple of years ago. Click to see the instructions: (Continue Reading…)

Last November, when Mike and I were planning our trip to Nevada, we really wanted to stay at a campsite in Valley of Fire State Park. It had electricity and water at the campsites. More importantly, the landscape looked gorgeous. We tried to see whether there was coverage for our cell phones on AT&T’s website, but they are not very complete. The only indication that we might NOT have coverage was a spot on the Valley of Fire brochure with a symbol with the words, “Possible cell service at this location.”

We wanted to stay in Valley of Fire, but planned on checking our phones before we settled on a campsite. The minute we drove into the campsite, however, our phones showed No Service. Even our trusty Verizon iPad, which seems to get coverage EVERYWHERE was without coverage. We ended up enjoying the day at Valley of Fire, and enjoyed the animal life there, but we moved on before the evening and camped at Lake Mead.

How I wish we had known about the Coverage? app [iTunes link]. If you look at the map on the right, you can CLEARLY see that there is a big white hole in the middle of Valley of Fire State Park. This is the beauty of the Coverage? app. You can see immediately how likely it is that you’ll have coverage on your travels. Here are some good things about the app:

• Easily know before you go: Avoid having to check each provider’s coverage map individually to know where you’re most likely to keep connected.
• No internet needed: All maps are stored locally, so you can see where coverage next is most likely even when you have none.
• Urban and rural maps: Maps cover the entire continental USA for AT&T, Sprint and Verizon.
• Know where to roam: view 4G, 3G, 2G and roaming areas as separate overlays, focus on the coverage type you need.
• Universal App – iPhone, iPod Touch and IPad, OS 4.2 and higher.

Here is a video explaining it:

This time, Mike and I are embarking on a trip to Quartzite, AZ for the big RV show there. Now, we know that we’ll have coverage, even though it will be just on EDGE. It’s a great little app that let’s us check for both AT&T and Verizon to know how much we’ll be able to get online.

If you travel frequently and your cell phone is your only access to the Internet, Coverage? might be a good app for you, no matter what provider you use.

I love this video recording campsite number 104 at Cape Disappointment in Washington State.

How did Cape Disappointment and Dismal Niche get their name? According to Wikipedia, it was named by a member of the Lewis and Clark team in 1805. They were trapped there by a storm and called the place a dismal niche. The name stuck, but it was not a fair assessment. The place looks like a dream!

Here is a video of the lighthouse at night:

Here is a video of Beards Hollow at Cape Disappointment. It’s better if you mute the audio because the music is rather intrusive.

Next time you’re planning a trip in the Pacific Northwest, take a look at Cape Disappointment. It promises not to live up to its name!

I usually don’t like watching cooking demonstrations. My idea of camp cooking is opening a can of beans or cooking meat over the fire. Matthew Cashmore is absolutely adorable, so watching him for twelve minutes cooking at a camp kitchen was so entertaining.

Here are the ingredients for the Bacon Curry. All of them are approximate based on what I saw in the video:

• 1/8 cup Olive Oil
• 2 large onions cut up roughly
• 2 garlic cloves chopped or crushed
• 2 stalks of celery sliced
• 3 large tomatoes chopped
• 3 Tbsp. tomato paste
• 6 tsp. cumin seeds
• 1 1/2 tsp. chili powder (more recommended)
• 2 vegetable broth cubes
• 1 small zucchini chopped
• 1/2 pound bacon sliced

If I were going to do this while camping, I would chop up the items BEFORE leaving and put the ingredients in a ziploc bag in the cooler before leaving. I’d have the onions and garlic in one bag, and the tomatoes, celery and zucchini in another. I might even replace the tomatoes with a can of tomatoes.

The thought of putting bacon into a curry is unique and it appears that Matthew is really just experimenting. After watching this video I wanted to run to the store to buy a bag of fresh produce and a packet of bacon to try to make this curry. For us Americans, courgettes are zucchini. Not quite as exotic as he made them sound, but YUM!

If you don’t really want to watch this video, just fast forward to the 9:12 minute mark to see how gracefully he handles Pink Helen’s interruption. It just made me smile to see him look at the camera!

If you want to see him taste his creation for the first time, fast forward to the 11:30 minute mark. He deems it not spicy enough because the salt in the bacon toned down the kick of the chili powder, but despite that he likes it. “That’s really good!”

Mike and I made this recipe with beef and it was absolutely delicious. If we ever find ourselves in a pinch and need to use bacon, I’m sure it will be just as good as long as I remember to add more chili powder.

Next time you’re planning your camping menu, skip the cans of chili and try cooking up this bacon curry. It sounds delightful!

I absolutely adore this video of a camper showing his friend how to cook stir fry while camping.

The cameraman is laughing his head off, so I immediately assumed that they were high. The more I thought about it, though, I have found myself being just as silly and laughing over the simplest things while camping at Lake Mead while stone cold sober.

They are using the exact same pan set that Mike and I have. I can’t even remember the brand of those pots, but they have been the BEST for us. It’s obvious that these guys like them as well.

These guys don’t have a huge camp kitchen setup with a table. Instead, they just cook on the ground and put their plates on the cooler. Whenever I am camping, THIS is the feeling that I usually get from cooking, sleeping and just relaxing in the outdoors. It’s so lovely that they were able to capture that emotion on camera and brought it to me in less than two minutes!

Update 02-20-12: I took a good look at my camping pans and they are the Bugaboo set from GSI. I tried to find them on Amazon, but it looks like they’ve been replaced by this set:

• GSI Outdoors Bugaboo Camper Cookset at Amazon.com

It includes cups and plates, which my set didn’t have. It was just a set of six pans (three pots and three frying pans). The beauty of my old set is that they were sized to nest so that they take the space of only one pot. They also sit so that the frying pan can be a lid for the similarly sized pot and vice versa.

Most importantly, they have lasted us for YEARS. The non-stick surface has stayed scratch-free and has not flaked off into our food like a cheap pan from Kmart. I love how the new set nests the pans AND the dishes in one convenient package and I’m tempted to upgrade, but since our pans have lasted so long and so well, there really isn’t a reason to change.