I think I'm harboring a cold and I'm a terrible writer, but I'll try to make this entertaining.
This weekend, went down to Devil's Den with Hobogestapo for a camping trip. We dubbed our site "Camp Crust." We didn't pack much with us; spacebag, a couple tarps, sleeping bags, a deck of cards, and that's about it.
We got camp set up pretty quickly, it was about a quarter mile hike from the park entrance to get to the site. There was one other group camping nearby who we named "Camp Douchebag" because they wouldn't greet us when we said hello. After camp was setup, the spacebag got passed back and forth.
When we finished off about half of that thing, we decided we needed more firewood and found a dead log sticking out of the ground that we had talked about retrieving earlier. We spent nearly 20 minutes trying to cut the top of the log off with a pruning saw before we noticed the base was moving. We decided the best option was to dig it up... with a spade.
It took us over an hour of digging with a spade and our hands to excise this log from the ground. It was pretty heavy, but we managed to haul it back to camp.
The night was full of laughs and great camp food. We were fortunate it didn't rain any after we bedded down.
The next day I woke up early and started the hike to the creek where we had been gathering wood earlier. It was about 0700 and there were deer all over the place, most of them within 20ft of me. They were really beautiful and didn't seem to be bothered by my walking through the woods. I stopped to admire them for a bit, collected my wood, and went back to camp.
I got a fire going and kicked Hobogestapo out of his tent. There were several deer very near our camp while we cooked beans and made coffee for breakfast. We decided we'd take a hike around after that.
We spent about two hours exploring Devil's Den at that point. We saw huge ice structures from the recent freeze and crawled around in their muddy caves. Most of the other hikers were suburban types, but were mostly friendly. Lots of the caves were super deep and I can understand why the park was named Devil's Den. They go down seemingly forever.
We had a little lunch after that and packed up for the hike back to the park entrance, then we hit up a Waffle House on the way home. We passed a couple of traveling folks on the way home. One of them was hitching, but we had way too much gear in my car to pick them up. I kind of wish we would've at least pulled over and helped out.
Poorly told/written story, but we had a blast. If you've never visited Devil's Den (or any other Arkansas state parks for that matter), you should really go check them out. The foothills of the Ozarks has some beautiful views and amazing wildlife.
Here's some pictures from the trip:
http://squattheplanet.com/album.php?albumid=788
And here's some info on Arkansas State Parks:
http://www.arkansasstateparks.com/
This weekend, went down to Devil's Den with Hobogestapo for a camping trip. We dubbed our site "Camp Crust." We didn't pack much with us; spacebag, a couple tarps, sleeping bags, a deck of cards, and that's about it.
We got camp set up pretty quickly, it was about a quarter mile hike from the park entrance to get to the site. There was one other group camping nearby who we named "Camp Douchebag" because they wouldn't greet us when we said hello. After camp was setup, the spacebag got passed back and forth.
When we finished off about half of that thing, we decided we needed more firewood and found a dead log sticking out of the ground that we had talked about retrieving earlier. We spent nearly 20 minutes trying to cut the top of the log off with a pruning saw before we noticed the base was moving. We decided the best option was to dig it up... with a spade.
It took us over an hour of digging with a spade and our hands to excise this log from the ground. It was pretty heavy, but we managed to haul it back to camp.
The night was full of laughs and great camp food. We were fortunate it didn't rain any after we bedded down.
The next day I woke up early and started the hike to the creek where we had been gathering wood earlier. It was about 0700 and there were deer all over the place, most of them within 20ft of me. They were really beautiful and didn't seem to be bothered by my walking through the woods. I stopped to admire them for a bit, collected my wood, and went back to camp.
I got a fire going and kicked Hobogestapo out of his tent. There were several deer very near our camp while we cooked beans and made coffee for breakfast. We decided we'd take a hike around after that.
We spent about two hours exploring Devil's Den at that point. We saw huge ice structures from the recent freeze and crawled around in their muddy caves. Most of the other hikers were suburban types, but were mostly friendly. Lots of the caves were super deep and I can understand why the park was named Devil's Den. They go down seemingly forever.
We had a little lunch after that and packed up for the hike back to the park entrance, then we hit up a Waffle House on the way home. We passed a couple of traveling folks on the way home. One of them was hitching, but we had way too much gear in my car to pick them up. I kind of wish we would've at least pulled over and helped out.
Poorly told/written story, but we had a blast. If you've never visited Devil's Den (or any other Arkansas state parks for that matter), you should really go check them out. The foothills of the Ozarks has some beautiful views and amazing wildlife.
Here's some pictures from the trip:
http://squattheplanet.com/album.php?albumid=788
And here's some info on Arkansas State Parks:
http://www.arkansasstateparks.com/
