An update on gear. . .

I purchased Caroline a pretty nice pack that could easily carry her small load and a water bladder (main thing). It has a built in rain fly and lots of features. I am so excited for her. She just recently ran a 5k run here in town and did it in about 30 minutes, which is substantial at age nine. She is also excited because I have almost 2 weeks off after Christmas. We are going to do our 20 mile 2 day trial during that time and we will truly see what she's got! I am anxious to get her out there and spend that time with her. If she can successfully carry a 10 to 12 lbs load on relatively flat Florida Blackwater Forest terrain then she will be able to do what we will be doing which is a 7-10 mile pace at the end of next summer on the AT.

I also traded a buddy of mine for a few needed items listed as possible needs below. The first is a Katadyn Hiker Pro water filter.



I have a great water filter squeeze bottle that I got about 10 years ago but it is getting old and with the amount of water that I am going to need I just can's see filling this thing up just to squeeze it into other containers or Caroline's water bladder. I sweat profusely! Doing 7-10 miles a day up and down mountains will ensure that I go through 2-3 liters a day. With any luck it will be kind of a cool winter. Either way my buddy had never used it.

He also had a MSR aluminum non stick cooking kit. I got those two things from him and I purchased a little butane hiker stove that weighs in at 4 oz. It's virtually identical to the MSR version but cost 20 bux less. The biggest advantage that I could determine for this tiny little stove was that it takes up less than 1/10 the space and weight that the wally world "hiker" stove does. Actually the Walmart stove is a better stove if space and weight are not an issue. It's flame covers a larger area which if you were frying eggs would be a good thing on a thin little lightweight pan. The new stove boils a quart of water in 3.5 minutes. Not bad for about 25 dollars. The fuel canisters are also lighter and more efficient than the big bulky butane canisters from "the Walmarts."

So my Pop moved to Crestview and I more or less stole his Hennessy Hammock from him. He mentioned to me that he doesn't fit well in it and I read that to mean, "you can have this." Sorry Dad if that's not what you meant but you will never see it again. I tested this hammock out on 4 very different nights. The first was a hot summer night. I was impressed at a few things. The first is that I thought for sure that on a hot muggy Florida night that I would be stuffy inside. I took the rainfly that covers the hammock and opened it up very wide so that it was still there in case it rained or a bird decided to drop his digested goodies on me. With the fly open the breeze into the hammock through the bug mesh was great. I was very comfortable even though I just had pj's and some socks on inside. The next two nights were nothing short of blissful. The lows were in the low 60's and it was dry and clear. On these nights I took a bag out and unzipped it half way and just slept like a baby. The final night was as cold as it gets here and the low was around 29 degrees in November. Incidentally it's December 17th and there won't be a single day this week where the highs are below 70 and the lows below 50 this whole week. Go figure. Anyway the only night that I will say was not pleasant was the 29 degree night. The Hennessy's biggest drawback is that it is more of a 3 season shelter/bed. With your back side to the bottom of your compressed bag (regardless of it's loft or quality) which is against a very thin but strong nylon shell of the hammock the cold gets to you. The alternative is to insulate with layers of foam or a sleeping pad. The drawback there is that the hammock is . . . well . . . a hammock and there isn't a ton of room inside so once you are inside you still have to zip your bag and situate yourself so you are on your sleeping pad. I tried all of these scenarios to determine if the hammock would work for me. The weight savings of hammock hanging are huge. They are convenient to setup and take down. Even with the cold weather disadvantages I can totally see myself taking a hammock next year. Now if I just had the larger Explorer model I would give Caroline the smaller one and then I would have a little more room inside. We'll see about all that. Here's a good little clip of a guy using the hammock in various ways.