Well, here I am in my meticulously lined nest, hoping that I don’t freeze to death for the second night in a row. So far, I feel a bit warmer, which is quite promising, considering my own nocturnal heater hasn’t kicked in yet. Huyana the domestic coyote (or so the german shepherd would have you believe) is bedded down in her crate, with a Coleman sleeping bag thrown on top to conserve her warmth. The propane lantern is hissing away, brightening our campsite to await Brandy’s return. I’m hunkered down, enclosed by digital forest camouflage, and preparing to find out whether I’ll see the morning after the sun rises…or before as I rush shivering to the car to grab the backup foam pad once more….
It started shortly after the HammockForums Fall Hang in November….as people (myself included) were posting their trip reports and photos, some began talking about the next group hang. Next thing you know, there’s a planning thread for going to Caddo Lake State Park — mid-January. Now, winter weather in Texas does some funny things. I still remember growing up in San Antonio, and actually having a brief heat wave, with temperatures in the upper 80s and lower 90s, in winter, as well as the one freak snowstorm that gave us 6 inches of completely foreign to us white stuff on the ground for a couple of days. So nobody really knew what was going to happen until about a week before the agreed-upon date, when everyone had already committed to their site reservations.
Another thing that had happened at the group hang was that I’d finally gotten to see, and decide I wanted, one of McEntyre’s insulated hammock socks. This is basically a piece of material that’s cut to completely enclose your hammock. It’s insulated on the bottom, and then there’s a length of just breathable nylon that you bring over the top, and it acts to help retain heat within the hammock above you. Brandy and Angela were kind enough to order it as a Christmas present, but McEntyre was busy with other holiday tasks, and couldn’t have it to me in time for Christmas morning. No problem, as he said he’d have it in time for the hang.
Two days before we were due to leave, I began to feel a bit concerned. Okay, I’ll be honest…Brandy had to email to check on it before the anticipation made me explode. We had paid for it about a week before, and I was worried there may have been some kind of post office foulup with the tracking or something, and my cover was sitting in a dusty warehouse out there, singing wistfully to the moon it could just glimpse through a tiny window….you know, if it had eyes….and lungs…and maybe the form of a cute little mouse in a coat and hat.
Anyway, he wrote back apologising, as life had gotten in the way and he hadn’t been able to mail it yet. Fortunately, he was able to get it FedEx overnighted to me at work, where it arrived Friday morning. This gave me part of one lunch hour (I had to walk the dog, since she goes to work with me) to hang it up in the warehouse and figure out how it worked. I thought I had the idea, and put it away until we arrived at Caddo Lake.
As usual, I got home and Brandy (who works from home) got off around 6. She had spent time that the phone wasn’t ringing gathering everything together, so we could just load it into the car and head out. Once again, years of Tetris pays off. We were driving out of the neighborhood when she asked if I had remembered her tarp and stakes and such. I hadn’t known it wasn’t with her other hammock stuff, so we went back to retrieve it. I remembered a Hennessy stuff sack in the computer room closet, grabbed it, peeked inside, saw a set of tree straps (she had said her stakes and other accessories were in with it) and ran back out to the car, for our second departure. At least this time we remembered the forgotten item before we got out of the neighbourhood…usually, we’re at least 10 miles away. Of course, we were somewhere around Tyler when we realized we’d also forgotten the coffeepot.
We stopped at the Walmart in Marshall, hoping to simply walk over to the camping section and get a cheapo camp coffeepot, but while it seems you can get every other component of a standard cookset individually, you are just out of luck if you want coffee (or hot water for all the tea and cocoa we’d brought). Funny story, though — while I was searching every aisle for a campfire-tolerant container of hot liquid, Brandy was walking Huyana out in the parking lot. At one point, she turned a corner, where some teens were hanging out, dressed like inner-city thug-wannabes. One of them started to leer at her, then noticed the 50-pound coyote on the leash, and literally jumped! “Um…nice dog, ma’am.”
Once at Caddo Lake, roughly 4 hours away from home, we saw that the campsite we had been assigned was not only unsuitable (the only three trees that weren’t actually in the water were either too far apart, or too big to get our tree straps around them), but was all the way at the other end of the loop from the other hammock campers. So we scouted out what was still available, and decided to set up in site #56, right next to some other hammock campers. As usual, we set up by the light from our headlights, because as usual, we arrived right around midnight.
Right away, Brandy saw that I had grabbed the wrong bag for her tarp. The stuff sack I had gotten held the Hennessy hammock that I had recently replaced with a Warbonnet Blackbird. Fortunately, the trees we selected were close enough together that we could cover both our hammocks with one tarp.
I rigged up the brand new hammock sock the way I’d guessed at in the warehouse, and it looked basically okay, although it wouldn’t hold the weight of the sleeping bag we’d brought along to ensure that we’d stay warm overnight, as it was supposed to get down to the mid-thirties. We’d taken a rig including those sleeping bags down to 27 before, so we figured we’d be fine. I tried loading the bag into my hammock sock, but it just weighed it down, so I went ahead and skipped it, knowing I’d be putting my gear to a serious test, and went to bed.
Sadly, the rig failed to keep me warm…badly. Fortunately, we had brought along a roll of blue foam as a backup, and it was enough to get me through the night, even if I wasn’t really comfortable. Deciding to have mercy and give a “Needs Improvement” instead of an F, I reexamined the setup in the morning, discovering that the bottom of the sock was just lying on the ground, as the suspension wasn’t holding it against my hammock at all. I managed to fix that, and with the help of Oldgringo and another gentleman whose name I didn’t catch, we came up with a way to hold up the sleeping bag, as well. The second night should be much better.
Having dealt with that, and some socializing from Gimpy and Alan and a few other folks wondering when we’d gotten in (I’m surprised nobody’s given us a nickname yet for always pulling in after everyone else has turned in for the night), we enjoyed a delicious batch of breakfast tacos, courtesy of Brandy, we wandered up to say howdy to UncleMJM and clan before heading out to do some more geocaching! Oh, except we also paused to get some charcoal going and the german potato soup started. Then we started out.
Our first cache was the state park-sponsored one. At ground zero, we wasted a fair bit of time searching all around a hollow fallen tree that would have been a good hiding spot, but eventually found it along one side of a natural pit. I dropped in a geocoin and signed the log, and we were off for the next one, a multi-cache.
After cutting across from the amphitheater to the other nature trail, uphill, we started down a well-marked trail, until the GPS started pointing off to one side. I briefly consulted the trail map, and saw that the narrow footpath to our right was the best option…at least until it was time for bushwhacking. We clambered uphill, avoiding briars as best we could, until we got to the general area where we would be looking for coordinates to the cache location. I looked for a washer, like before, and on a suspiciously-hanging strip of bark. I even looked at a tree where the bark was missing, in case it was carved there for some reason. It’s a good thing they thoughtfully include hints for those of us who are new to the hobby, as I might not have thought to see it painted on the underside of a rock. Brandy spotted the designated stone first, and I entered the coordinates, but thought it strange that it showed a spot outside of the park. I had Brandy double-check me, and she saw the digit I read wrong. Correction made, we climbed back down to the trail and walked on.
Eventually, we saw that the GPS was pointing to the far side of the valley we were walking along. I looked at the map again, and it showed we’d go out to the road, then cut across to a different trail and head back on the other ridge. The fun part here was the footbridge — it was marked off with caution tape, as one of the side rails and some of the walking boards were damaged. Yeah, right – like that’s going to stop us. We slipped under the tape and hiked across, careful of our footing, then under the tape again on the far side. Of course, a moment later, as it joined the other trail, we found that we could simply have walked up the road. Meh, we like the danger better!
After hiking along the “old road” a little bit, and letting someone coo over Huyana, we again turned off the trail, climbing down into the valley until we eventually reached ground zero. Now, the hint and logs said something about a tree hollow, and Brandy saw a hollow log that would have been great as a hiding spot. I climbed over to it, folding myself around various branches until I could squat down and look into the hole. I didn’t see anything, but it was very dark, and I didn’t have my headlamp. A little judicious poking didn’t seem to reveal anything, so we continued searching.
“Think small and look for the string,” the hint had read, so I looked in only small nooks. While standing still and staring down the various trees, searching in finer detail than my vision naturally tends towards, I spotted a dark hole in the middle of what looked like a knot on a tree a little down the hill. I walked up to it, and sure enough, there was a small white container wedged perfectly in there, with a little bit of string hanging off it. When I pulled it out, there was a stream of cool air coming from the hollow — now I’m probably gonna pore over topographic maps of the area, looking for a cave entrance.
At this point, we decided to head back to camp for a bit, as Brandy wanted to check on the soup. I also noticed it was getting a bit late in the day, and suggested we save the next one until Sunday. We schlepped back up to the trail, mainly just remembering it was uphill until we hit it, back out to the road, and down again to camp. Brandy stirred the soup while I inhaled the lunch she’d thoughtfully put in my daypack — salami, cheese, and carrot sticks! Gimpy stopped by and we spoke a bit about geocaching and wild foods, when Brandy said she’d like to go try for that third cache near the CCC pavilion. We stopped where the group was, and found that dinner was planned to be served around 5:30. Since it was only about 4, we took off to try our luck.
Down to the boat dock, along the path through the wetland area, and then up ten thousand stairs until we reached the top of the hill, cut over to the pavilion, and the GPS pointed down into the valley again. Brandy spotted a path under all the leaf litter (don’t ask me how, but the dirt was packed, so it was an actual trail, even if it wasn’t on the map), and we climbed down the hill until we reached the target area. Once again, we poked into every likely hiding spot, under and in logs, holes in the ground, whatever likely spot for a small rubbermaid container we could guess at. A lot of poor critters were going to have to rearrange their bedding that night. Finally, as the sun was setting behind the hill and the clock read 5:11, we decided to give it up and go back to camp.
Sadly, once there, nature called, and I had a phone call to make, so that left Brandy to haul the Dutch oven of soup over to the group site — the time I saw said it was around 5:35, but apparently that was just too late, as people were already going through the food line when Brandy got there, and the german potato soup got overlooked. Oh well, lesson for next time — don’t try to do one more thing when it’s anything less than 2 hours before supper is expected to be served.
We left Huyana at the campsite, so there wouldn’t be any arguments with the beagle someone else had brought. We sat and enjoyed many different dishes, although I couldn’t see what I was eating. I know I had some other potato soup, some pasta, sauteed veggies, red beans and rice, and of course, the cherry crisp. UncleMJMs wife had expressed an interest in seeing one of my other Christmas presents, the Martin backpacker guitar, so I showed it to her and doodled with a few chords (I’ve only been playing for 3 weeks), while we chatted with the people nearby. Discussions ranged from hammock stands to water restrictions to dog training and many other subjects. After a couple of hours, though, I was feeling the cold even through three layers of clothing and a thick leather jacket, so I wandered back to camp, where I lay in my nest and started this entry until Brandy returned from the group.
By the time she got back, I was actually sweating a little bit, so I went down to one layer, shoving the rest to various corners within my hammock. This actually got me through about 2am, when Brandy woke up and headed for the restroom. Now I was feeling a little chilly, so I put the other layers of clothing back on, and zipped up my sleeping bag. I’m not entirely sure of the solution — my guess is I need to hang the ends a little farther up the suspension strap — but I had a fair-sized gap directly underneath me. It wasn’t intolerable, just a little uncomfortable…I was still able to sleep in until 9:30 the next morning. When Brandy got up, I asked her to stick her hand up inside the cover before I released the warm air — she guessed it felt about 10 degrees warmer than outside to her. Yeah, I still have some tweaking to do, but I’m happy with the Molly Mac Hammock Sock.
We had another breakfast, and when Brandy went to change, Huyana started raising a fuss, so I put a hand on her — at that very moment, a ranger drove up. “Do you have that dog on a leash?”
“Yes, sir, she’s attached to the tree.”
“I’m just checking, since a lot of people let their dogs loose and put a hand on them when they see me coming.”
“No, I’m just trying to settle her down since mama is walking off down the road right now.”
Another funny dog story is that we’d given her a milk bone the day before — she just buried it in the leaves instead of eating it. A little while later, she dug it up, tossed it around to play with it for a while, then buried it again. Well, Brandy had her when we were saying our goodbyes after packing up camp, and she had dug up the milk bone and carried it over with her. As we turned to leave, she finally reached down and ate it — I guess she figured it was her last chance.
We dawdled a bit with everyone else, looking at people’s various bits of gear, and Brandy found a turtle shell in the woods. Time grew short, though, and we had a long drive back, so we eventually made our departure, although Brandy did pop into the store for a couple of park souvenirs. On the way home, we did pop in briefly to Tyler State Park to seek out one last geocache and send a second trackable on its way.
Yet another great trip, and my head is already full of new ideas for my next gear upgrade! Thanks for the hang, everyone, and we’ll see you again in November, if not sooner!
