Let's See Your CAMPING GEAR RECOMMENDATIONS/ALLEGORIES/TALES

[Iommic Pope]

That is cool.

[space6oy]

That is cool.

until this:

[Doesy]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBnzZarY7zQ[/youtube]

Done this jump a few times when I still lived at home.

[space6oy]

crazy. how do you get down from that and how does the line get back up?

[Doesy]

Climb up the rope (like you do in PE Class at school) Then hook yourself onto a second rope that hangs down from the top of the ledge and climb up the side of the cliff face! Not for the feint hearted haha.

[space6oy]

jesus. lotta climbing work...

[Mike]

My wife and I just got back from two nights of camping, our first time since we camped over Y2k. We went to Stephen C. Foster state park, which sits on the 400,000+ acre Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, a few hours from here. We had a great time.

It was car camping, so it wasn't really roughing it. We were one of just two or three tent campers, though, with the rest being RVs. We had nice weather, with daytime temps in the 70s. The first night was a bit chilly, in the 40s, but the second night was almost 60. The near-full moon blocked what was supposed to be a spectacular night sky, so we plan on going back.

It is so freaking quiet out there, especially late at night on the (colder) first night. That night, there was no bug noise, and no bird noise. When we wandered away from camp, the silence was like a sensory deprivation chamber. Living in a city, it was a really nice change.

On the warmer night, the bugs were loud. There were Barred Owls calling from all directions. There was a group of five deer that walked around the campsite, as close as ten feet from us, both day and night. One night, as I showered, I had to be careful not to step on the grasshopper that was being stalked by a tree frog who was in hot pursuit.

The main activity for us, besides hiking around and exploring, was renting a boat for the day. For $70, you get 6 hours with a little john boat with a 6hp motor. I've flown a plane, I've driven a train, I've driven a semi truck. I had never driven a boat. I think it went pretty well. We covered almost the entirety of the public use areas. You have to slalom the boat between trees with only six inches to spare on each side. The water in the swamp is black-- you can only see a few inches down. The wake off the back of the boat looked like root beer.

There were gators everywhere. I would be navigating the boat through a 6-foot wide channel, and the gators would be just a few feet from the boat, which sat about a foot above the water. We were really close. They ranged in size from a few feet up to about 12 feet long. There were also herons and ibis all over the place. We saw a spectacular deer walking through the water that didn't seem to have any fear of people at all.

Here is an album of some of the pictures we took: Link.