yup. It’s a really neat place, and once you go there, you’ll never be able to watch a movie or TV show set in “the desert” again without knowing exactly where it was filmed.
Also highly recommend a stop at Manzanar if you head out that way (assuming its open). Sobering, but necessary trip.
I love camping. Easiest way to avoid bugs is to have a fire. Also, set your tent up as far away from the fire pit. Throw everything you need in the tent when you set it up in middle of the day. Do not go back into your tent until you go to bed. And don’t turn flashlight on until you are inside the tent and zipped. All the bugs near your tent will be drawn to the fire… Makes me laugh seeing people go in and out 50x a day. No wonder you have bugs.
Plenty of beer helps
Lots of old Westerns were filmed in the Alabama Hills. There’s an old restaurant in I think Lone Pine that has tons of signed head shots on the walls.
Camp in California. In addition to perfect weather, mother nature also decided to bless us with almost no bugs for some reason.
Note: does not apply to Yosemite in early spring and mid-summer when mosquitos are so thick they clog your throat if you open your mouth. No idea why they have such a population explosion, as there aren’t that many large animals for them to feed on, and this was in Tuolumne Meadows - a long way from the crowds in the Valley.
But for the most part, very little bugs.
For the people saying they hate camping, it isn’t always the easiest. There can be bugs, cold, stiff backs from sleeping on pads, crotchrot, and lots of other discomforts. So it’s not like you’re in euphoria the whole time.
But for me it’s more about how I feel after escaping the dull city existence - to a completely different reality for a few days. I look at a lot of experiences like that. Might not be the most fun/comfortable sensation at the time. But afterward you’re richer for it. Or at least your batteries are recharged for a while.
I never experienced a big mosquito problem in Yosemite. I don’t remember exactly what dates I’ve been there, but lots in the summer. We went to Berkeley’s family camp (Camp Tuolomne) every summer for a stretch too.
The only time I’ve seen a real cloud of mosquitos was in Yellowstone.
Probably June in Yosemite. They were so starving they were swarming, at noon. If you stopped moving for a second they were all over you. Bug spray didn’t slow them down. It’s by a factor of 10 or so the worst mosquitos I’ve ever experienced anywhere in the world.
The only relief was when we finally got to the very top of Clouds Rest. But then once we hiked down towards Half Dome, they weren’t as bad. Tuolomne was just beset that year apparently. I never go near that part of Yosemite until August.
But maybe they aren’t as bad every year I dunno. Could have been a wet year or just population explosion for some reason.
psh, summer camping. Another plus for the RV is this:
OK, I’ll admit we winterized it a bit, but it makes for a great ski trip vehicle. This is our Thanksgiving tradition. Fear not! we camp overnight in the RV park there, and there are always tent campers, even when it’s like this.
No bugs, either
I’ve tent-camped in below zero. It’s interesting.
I ended up buying a box of 10 surgical masks because I figured out they were just the right balance to keep my nose from freezing, w/o suffocating me. I still had 6 of those when covid hit and no one could find any kind of mask. Score one for camping.
The worst is getting out of your nice warm sleeping bag and putting on your frozen boots that are now icy from getting wet the day before. That takes some serious resolve.
I saw a Nat Geo show where some guy went to the coldest inhabited place on earth. When they’re out hunting, the Inuits (or whatever they’re called in Russia) sleep in an in inner fur tent, inside an outer fur tent which keeps the wind out. They also burn a fat candle inside the inner tent. It was so warm inside this apparatus, the host of the show was sleeping in his underwear with no sleeping bag when it was -60 and a windstorm outside.
When I was in Boy Scouts we used to go to Lake George in upstate NY every February for the winter carnival. We rented cabins but one year there was 5 feet of snow on the ground. 4 or 5 of us dug a snow cave and slept in it. It was probably 50 degrees inside while it was -25 outside. It’s crazy how well snow acts as an insulator.
I get this when we go on holiday to a new country, with a comfortable hotel bed, bathroom, aircon, wardrobe and cooked breakfast thrown in for good measure.
I’m pretty sure the mosquitoes in the Everglades are spawned out of pools of DEET, because they seem to bother me more when I wear bug spray than when I go without.
Also, subscribed. I’ve been working my way up to doing some solo multi-day hikes in Big Cypress. I really want to hike across it, but it takes about three days and is actually quite dangerous, so I haven’t worked up the nerve yet. It will be soon though.
Anyone here have experience with multi-day hikes? I could use some advice of what’s good to pack in the way of food. Doesn’t have to be fancy, just want something that will nourish me but not take up a ton of space.
I get it too from that. But I don’t get the primal satisfaction that I get from camping.
Protein bars are good. Freeze dried meals that you cook by pouring boiling water into the bag (what I call REI Rations) are really good, but at like $5-7/meal not cheap. Rice and beans are similar nutritional value. They get old fast, but 3 days might be fine.
Anything with chocolate is about the best calorie to weight ratio you can get.
One thing I do is pack something nice and completely impractical for the first day - like a big sub, maybe some Hostess Dingo Dongs, a pint of vodka and some kool-aid, etc. Might as well live it up that first day while you eat/drink most of the extravagant weight.
I go for dry cereal with dry milk already mixed in, just add water, for breakfast. Various candy bars during the day, maybe some fruit on the first day or two off the road, and then freeze dried dinners.
Also my entire set up minus food and water is only about 7 pounds, so I can carry some beers or wine sometimes.
Along those lines, when we go back country camping we pack one meal of frozen steaks. When we arrive at camp one day one, we have thawed steaks ready for grilling.
Yeah that’s the idea. Carry something extravagant up for the first night. Especially if the first day of hiking isn’t super-brutal with lots of elevation gain.
One of the benefits of camping is that food tastes amazing after a day of hiking. One of my friends has a huge plastic tub that functions as a backpack and we take a ton of stuff. When one person’s job is to haul the food barrel you can really stock up. We take red wine!
