Over the weekend, I went on a camping trip with my 5-year-old son in a group of five adults and nine children in western Pennsylvania. We had a very good time, with one bad incident, and I wanted to talk about the various preparations that helped with both.

While preparing for this trip, I rethought and restocked my first aid kits. I've generally felt better prepared having the largest variety of stuff for all situations – all sizes of bandaids, a variety of antiseptics, painkillers, medications, etc. But after reading several of the various first-aid kit threads here, with peoples' pictures included, I've begun to believe I'll be better served by covering the basics more thoroughly. I ditched most of the bandaids, keeping knuckle and fingertip ones and a couple large regular ones, and stocked about 10 4x4 gauze pads instead, as well as a second roll of tape. I also got a deal on some Kerlix sponge pads (pharmacy's going-out-of-business sale) – basically a 4x4 gauze but about 3x as thick.

A story my sister-in-law told (about 20 years ago) of how one of my nephews got garden lime into his eyes while playing in a storage shed, and how she and the neighbor (a nurse) cleaned his eyes out with 5 bottles of saline solution has prompted me to always have some around in home and car FAKs, and in smaller FAKs, I try to always have at least some of those small individual use eyedrops.

So, for the trip's bad incident: Roughhousing among all those boys led to one, an 8-year-old, cracking his head on one of the only rocks in an open field. The adults were used to random loud screeches over the course of the weekend, so it was only his second, long one that caught our attention.

The only mom on the trip (not that child's mom) was closer and started running to him, and I looked up and saw red across his forehead and started running toward him, too. She got to him first and pulled his hand off his forehead to see the wound. I caught up and whipped out a bandana to cover the wound. She carried him back to the tarp-covered “hovel” we had set up, and sat him down in a chair. With the blood wiped clear, he had a roughly quarter-sized, deep gash showing in his forehead.

I handed the first Kerlix to the woman to apply pressure. I was surprised how quickly the bleeding stopped, for such a (comparatively) large wound, since some real small head wounds will just gush for a long time. The boy's dad was here by this point, and I think it helped that the two of us applying first aid weren't his parents, because the dad looked a bit shocked by it all. When he saw the wound, he said, “What do you think – could we just bandage it up?” I think he was voicing his wishful thinking, because it was pretty obvious that was going to mean stitches.

I didn't bring any saline, because we had to pack in everything (1.5-2 miles from the cars) and we'd ridden with the dad of the injured boy, so no car FAK. I broke open all of the single-use eye wash vials, and we covered the boy's eyes with a camp towel so the liquid wouldn't get in his eyes, and I tried to use them to irrigate the wound. So, lesson No. 1 – these things only put out about 6-8 drops of liquid, and there's nothing like a squirt of pressure to irrigate with. Basically, I was dripping liquid into the wound, with no real way to wash anything out. We talked about what else we could use to irrigate the wound, and we rejected using the artesian spring water we were drinking (clean, clear water, but occasionally floating objects when the water in the collection basin is disturbed). The father suggested we boil some water and let it cool, then use that to irrigate the wound – and for about three seconds, I thought that sounded like a great idea. But then I realized what we needed to do was get him ready to travel to the ER, now that the bleeding had stopped and he'd calmed down. So, we decided we'd done as much cleanup of the wound as we could practically, and it was time to bundle him off. The mom asked for butterfly bandages, but I said I didn't have any. Lesson No. 2: Be sure of your inventory. Later, I found I had about half a dozen in the kit. So the mom smeared some neosporin on a fresh gauze, covered the wound, and we taped it on securely.

The dad and another adult accompanied the boy on the walk back to the cars, and proceeded on to the hospital. Lesson No. 3 – know how to get to the hospital from where you will be. This camping location is somewhere my family has been going for more than 30 years, when we used a deer hunting lodge my grandfather had helped build longer ago than that. The cabin is long gone, but we camp near the site. My cousin (the injured boy's dad) has been going by himself or with a couple friends for more than a decade, and recently they started bringing their sons, and in all that time he'd never learned where the hospital was. Luckily, his friend who was driving had a GPS and found the directions to the Warren hospital. They found an empty ER, and got him taken care of in just over an hour, (8 stitches) but it was still 1:30 a.m. before they returned to the camp site.
So, my plans for the future: Stick with lots of gauze and tape for flexibility of wound care. Get needle-free syringes for irrigating wounds. Have a much more accurate inventory of my kits, and know where each item is (less stuffing items where they fit easily).

A couple questions for opinions/suggestions: would you use butterfly bandages on such a wound to help close it up for the transport to hospital? What antiseptic/wound care medications do you carry/recommend (alcohol swabs, iodine, betadine, green soap, etc.). Does anyone regularly carry any of the more involved wound care products in larger kits (ADB pads, bloodstopper/Israeli bandages, etc.?). Any better suggestions than syringes or saline bottles for irrigating wounds?

Now, on to happier topics, and things that worked well.

Last year was the first time my son and I joined this group for their annual trip (I hadn't been to the site since I was a teen), and one of the “must-haves” my cousin suggested for my packing list (it had been years since I'd camped, too) was gloves. Gloves have never been on my list for camping, but since they regularly gather dead wood for a fire ring, break branches to feed the fire, etc., they all carry them. Well, they will always be on my list now. I never got a blister, splinter, cut on my hands, and they were great for campfire cooking duty, too. I prefer full leather gloves – Costco's got three-packs for about $20, and I now have them in the cars and several packs.

Headlamps: Wonderfully practical, even the cheap ones. I used a Rock River headlamp I got from Target several years ago - .5-watt LED, runs on two AAA batteries, and has low, high and off. Great for doing everything around the camp. I love my flashlights, but for camping, I think a headlamp's about 4 (or more) times as useful.

Teaching kids about the "Hug-a-Tree" program: I spent about 15 minutes with the kids in our group, trying to run them through the very basics of what to do if they got lost, and tried to tell them the rough outline of Hug-a-Tree. Results were mixed, as ages ranged from 4 to 9, and attention spans wandered. I got them to repeat that if lost, they should stop and find a tree or big rock to stay with. I also showed them ponchos vs. contractor bag ponchos, how to make a poncho out of a garbage bag, getting their face all the way through the hole, and supplied a bag to whichever kids didn't already have a poncho or garbage bag, and had each practice making their own to carry in a pocket. We practiced whistling in sets of three (very popular) and that's as far as the group was ready to go. My son has a "Hug-a-Tree" pack and has been great about carrying it with him every time he left the camp site or clearing, even if it was to play in the woods within site of the tents. It's a fanny pack with a whistle attached to the outside, and inside has a 2xAA LED flashlight, a .5L aluminum water bottle, an AMK updated space blanket, and blaze orange disposable poncho, and a headlamp. We've practiced at home in our back yard - just very simple roleplaying. "Oh no Sam, you're lost, what should you do?" Then he goes to a tree, sits down and blows his whistle in threes. "Oh no, it's raining - now what?" He pulls out the poncho and puts it on. "Now you're cold" - and he wraps up in the blanket. Of course, then I have to take a turn getting lost, and he calls out the orders, but he remembers what to do now. The one thing we didn't do that I'd hoped to do was to have the boys practice, one by one, sitting in the dark and quiet for a little while. Originally, I'd thought 10 minutes, but then thought 2 minutes would be more than sufficient for this age range. Have an adult walk them out of sight of the campfire, step behind a tree, and have all lights out, just to see what real dark is like, and what the night sounds like, with the reassurances that there's nothing there to hurt you, and if you hear a noise and blow your whistle at it, if it's an animal it will leave, and if it's a person, they'll come and help. Didn't do that one though - perhaps in the future. I want it to be a lesson, not a traumatic initiation.

Another glitch I need to overcome: I had to dig through a bunch of Rubbermaid containers, packs, random bags, etc., to pack up for this trip because we don't camp regularly. After a late night of packing, I got what I needed together, but at the site, I did a lot of searching for stuff I needed, because I couldn't remember where I'd put it. To the point of, I couldn't find the blaze orange drysack I had my son's clean clothes in, and so I couldn't find the sweats I'd packed, and we had to borrow a pair of jeans from one of his older cousins. Of course, the next day, I found the blaze orange drysack at the bottom of my pack - where I'd looked at least three times. I need to organize better and more consistently, and develop a place for everything and everything in its place.

Dutch oven: I decided to bring one on this trip, because it's car-supported, although the walk to the camp site from the cars is about as far as I'd want to carry one. I brought a 14-inch oven that I hadn't cooked in yet, although I did season it per the suggestions on http://www.camp-cook.com/forum/ (actually, a link from that forum to http://www.mikenchell.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8779 – look for the post by “Chef”).

Each adult had responsibility for one meal, so I got Saturday night, and I used the dutch oven to make biscuits Saturday morning to supplement breakfast, and helped with Sunday morning breakfast with sausage gravy and biscuits. Saturday night, I made a peach dump cake.

I'm still very new to cooking with a dutch oven, so the group was basically serving as guinea pigs for me. I made the biscuits with a homemade version of Bisquick – premixed at home, carried in gallon-sized Ziplocs. I used this gentleman's preparation method for biscuits: http://www.cowboyshowcase.com/dutch_oven_cooking.htm. I added the water to the Ziploc, squeezed and massaged the bag until it was workable dough, then poured about 1/8-inch of oil into the bottom of the dutch oven. I used a big metal spoon to portion out biscuits, and rolled them around in the oil. I didn't bother cutting out perfect biscuit shapes, and no one complained about that. I tried to use the charcoal briquet recommendations for above/below heat (yes, I actually packed in briquets, and was roundly mocked for it).

I'm just not yet comfortable with my heat guesstimations to do it with the (ample) supply of hot coals we had on hand. It turned out that using the recommended number of briquets, cooking time was very slow, and all other portions of the meal were done before I was ready. I ended up shoveling coals from the fire on top of the lid to supplement the heat, and the biscuits were still a bit pale when I decided they were “done enough.” I got compliments, but the cook's never satisfied with the product.

For the dump cake, I again used the outline of directions from Floyd, using 4 cans of peaches in syrup, 2 boxes of spice cake mix and a couple cans of 7Up to moisten the cake mix. End result – lovely smell, but far too juicy – I should have drained all but perhaps one of the cans of peaches. Also, the cake mix ended up being more like a pudding than cake in consistency...not sure what went wrong with that, either. For those who've made dump cakes, are you getting a cakey topping? How much liquid are you adding to do that, or are you making it more like a traditional cake mix to get those results? Again, I had to supplement the briquets with coals to get the cake to progress – it seemed to be achingly slow to get done.

Sunday morning, I started the biscuits first and HEAPED coals from the fire above and below. I followed the general directions by taking it off the bottom heat after a while, then doubled up heat on top (as much of the coals as the top lip would hold), and this batch turned out nicely, a bit golden brown on top. Sausage gravy was done on the Coleman propane stove in cast iron skillets, and the second batch turned out great – but by that time, most people were full. Oh well.

One technique that works nicely with the dutch oven is rotating it every 5 minutes or so. I do clockwise ¼ turn for the oven itself (lift it by the handle), then ¼ turn counterclockwise for the lid (turn the handle loop with a lid lifter). This keeps any hot spots from burning above or below and evens out the heat nicely.

Overall, it was a great camping trip, and we all left a little heavier, and one now has a Harry Potter scar to show his friends.

Dave