As you may know, barring any other commitments, I try to go camping once a month with a bunch of families. Well at our last camp a few weeks ago, we talked about just the guys getting away and camping. This past weekend, we did just that.

The plan was for me to solo camp Friday night then meet up with a couple of the other dads from our usually camping group on Saturday. My plan was to test out and photo some new toys and to do all the cooking on the campfire.

Items I planned to use and review included:

* HillBill's woodlore clone that I received too late to take on my last camping trip. Planned chores included batoning firewood, making feather sticks, and any other miscellaneous cutting.
* A wood gas stove I made. I wasn't going to light a camp fire the first night and just make my meals and hot drinks with the small wood gas stove.
* Zebra billy. I have used an old MSR cook set for quite a few years along with the occasional can and the ever present canteen cup. Since Ben's Backwoods got some Zebra billy's in stock, I decided to buy one.

Well, things don't always go as planned. My wife reminded me that the kids were going to be at a Christmas party, so I traded my solo camp on Friday for quality alone time with the missus.

When I got to camp Saturday afternoon, I set up my tarp shelter overlooking the lake, started the fire, hung out for just a little bit before getting ready to make dinner.

Prior to cookiing, I gave the guys a tinder tube made from cotton filler cord and aluminum tubing along with a ferro rod. We played with making fire with the ferro rod and they discovered that the better the scraper, the better the sparks. But we tried different things including the back of a knife, a piece of flint, a rusty nail, the edge of the aluminun tubing (that was a great idea that didn't work), and my favorite...a Corona sharpener. Each of the things we tried worked except for the aluminum tubing. The idea was to scrape and catch a spark in the charred end of the cotton filler cord. The Corona sharpener worked the best and threw massive hot sparks from all sizes of ferro rods, including the dimunitive BSA hotspark.

We also use flint and steel. And the cotton filler cord performed beautifully. The ember on that thing was big and hot enough to even set ablaze a swath of burlap.

The dad's declined to do fire by friction even though I had brought different woods for them to try.

It was time to make dinner. I made each of us a NY steak and a couple of chicken thighs to go with a big pot of rice. I used the 12cm Zebra billy for our hot drinks and it worked as expected in the fire. I liked that it is more robust than a coffee can and has more capacity than a canteen cup.

Used the old stand by MSR pot to cook rice in the fire as well.

And made the steaks and chicken right in the bed of hot coals. The guys were surprised. First, that I just put it in the coals. Second that the meat wasn't "crunchy." They both used that term quite a bit. And third, that it came out perfrctly. The chicken was fully cooked and juicy. The steaks were a perfect medium rare leaning more on the rare side. The rice was soft and fluufy and not burnt. A great (and big) meal. I didn't think to take any pictures when I was cooking but remembered after sticking the meat in a plate just before the food was consumed.

Oh, I also tried making Hoodlum Pipemaker's lembas honey bread. It was a big hit.

The night was beautiful. We sat at the fire and chatted and stargazed while we had some hot tea. Then we wandered over to the lake and chatted some more there. We just hung out until our eyes were adjusted to the dark and went through the night without any lights.

One thing about Saturday was that even though the weather was beautiful and it didn't rain, there was a lot of condensation in the air and everything was wet.

Because we set up away from the trees, it got quite cold especially close to dawn. We did that on purpose to have our lake view. The wool blanket was barely large enough for my liking and barely adequate.

I was planning on trying to use the coals from our camp fire to catch a spark and light a fire that way, but one of the other guys was up before me and had already started the fire. Surpriingly, despite the moisture, the bed of ashes and coals was still hot.

After a great breakfast of spam and egss and left over rice, washed down with much coffee with left over honey bread, we broke camp down and took off.

Sunday was super busy! After breaking camp, I went straight to my martial arts class. 3-4 hours later, I go straight to my in-laws to load up some pipe, strap them down in my truck, unload them at home, barely have time for a bite to eat for a very late lunch and a much needed shower, then off to my coach's meeting. By then, it was dinner time and I was beat.

Last night, my kids found a centipede in the house. I think it hitched a ride in my bag, since I left my bag in the living room and that's where the centipede was.

At bed time, I didn't lie down with my kids because I would have been out if I did. Despite that, I fell asleep anyway, but fortunately woke up after they fell asleep so I could spend some time with my wife before knocking out for the night.

So pictures will be up after I get them sorted out of the camera. Sorry this was so long winded. I guess it's true that a picture is worth a 1000 words. My next post will be much less wordy. I promise.