Night Hike and Overnight Camping

Fred and I hiked some of the trail on the south side and also did some off-trail exploring in the dark on Tuesday night (November 18). That trail really needs work in places.

We hit some of our favorite spots and stumbled upon some bears. This is the second time this month that we’ve stirred up some bears while hiking at night. They are pretty hard to see in the dark woods, but they aren’t hard to hear.

We finished our hike around 22:00, grabbed our camping gear and hiked back into the woods. We set up our rain flies and hammocks and rolled out our sleeping bags. I changed into sleeping clothes and crawled into my sleeping bag right away, while Fred made a small fire and sat by it for a while before doing the same.

I had just nodded off when a helicopter flew right over us just above the tree tops at 23:30. That sucked because I was startled out of REM sleep and had trouble getting back to sleep after the adrenaline hit. I did, eventually, get back to sleep and I slept fairly well.

It was close to 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 C) when I woke up at 6:30. It warmed up quickly and turned out to be a beautiful morning to be in the forest. Have I mentioned, lately, how much I love my hammock chair? 🙂 It’s always with me, because it packs down small enough to fit in a pocket and it weights about 9 oz.

Because I live in a place where popup rain showers are common and we normally get a lot of rain, in general, I make it a point to put up my rain fly first, and take it down last. That means I like to have gear where the rain fly is separate from the shelter. That isn’t as common with tents, but it’s pretty easy with a hammock. I have actually encountered the situation where this practice saved me from getting wet or having wet gear. A year or so ago, I arrived at my campsite, set up my rain fly and put my gear under it just as it started raining. I was then able to hang my hammock while standing under the rain fly and keeping my gear out of the rain. I highly recommend this practice if you camp anywhere where rain is common.