Yeah a lot of that stuff seems more like Bear Grylls cosplay than useful. I hike in a very different climate than Florida but I would prioritize layers for overnight warmth plus something to stay dry if necessary.
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Staying dry is nice but if your outdoor clothing system relies on dryness to keep you warm it will inevitably fail in a wet environment. If it rains long enough and you’re outside long enough everything in your pack and what you’re wearing will get wet. Which basically boils down to don’t bring cotton anything. Wool and polyester are nearly as warm when wet as when dry. Down sleeping bags are also dangerous in a wet environment, if it gets wet your zero degree bag is about as effective as a wet bedsheet.
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Also, the bug spray is a giveaway. If you’re concerned about getting bit by mosquitoes, you shouldn’t be hiking alone in the Everglades and bug spray does nothing to stop them.
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I can’t remember whether I shared this photo here, but the mosquitoes in the Everglades are unlike anything I’ve seen, but the horseflies are just as bad if not worse. This photo was taken near Gumbo Limbo, which is way in the southern Everglades, those are all horseflies:
They will not let up.
Yeah, I hate mosquitos but horsefly bites are nasty.
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Those little black flies in Maine in the early summer are the worst
The gnats here were so bad one day this summer every place I went that day were swarms of them. I had multiple end up going up my nose, some getting in my ears despite wearing headphones. It was crazy. I was in my truck driving home and they were in my hair and shit. Only day this summer I’ve even noticed them though.
Ontario too.
I’m trying to wrap my head around “phone with app that syncs to my GPS” being essential outdoors gear. Like it’s unfathomable how people survived nature walks in the ancient times of 2005.
Your description reminds me of this:
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Damn the East Coast and South and Midwest suck.
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A lot of times they didn’t? People going on hikes and getting lost and dying seems to still be a problem even with fancy phone apps.
I think people were actually more careful pre cell phone. Everybody is accustomed to whipping out their devices and receiving step by step instructions on how to get from point A to point B. I think that it probably catches a lot of people off guard to be lost and pull out their phone only to get no signal.
I dont have any data to back this up so maybe I’m just a grumpy old man.
These morons are a great example. I hope the rescue company charges their ass a lot.
Can you imagine if someone with an actual injury died because rescue teams were tied up “rescuing” these people that abandoned their canoes?
So I saw a post on here about the USPS informed delivery thing and I signed up for it and waited for the mail code and set everything up and just looked at my first email and the scans are entirely my roommates junk mail haha uh I thought I was signing up for my own mail and not my entire houses ok I guess I gotta delete this now that I’m accidentally tracking all my roommates mail
Outdoor dining was one of the low risk things on that epidemiologist chart a week ago. If that kind of thing would improve your quality of life, I urge you to do it.
These are also somehow the exact same people who constantly ask others for information they could discover themselves with 10 seconds of Googling.
Confirmed I’m a grumpy old, and I’d probably derive a lot of perverse pleasure watching people try to cope with a total collapse of the internet and mobile phone networks.
I almost fell off a boat after a horsefly got me. That shit hurts.
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