trip #1

so the first trip began in Maryland around Washington monument on st. Patrick's day weekend. we were only out for 3 days and 2 nights but it was our first trip out so we had a lot of tweaking to do afterwards. Friday afternoon we started and went about 2 miles into Dalgren Backpacker's Campground. we started the trip easy to kind of give ourselves time to adjust to walking with packs and such. this was the trip where my mom packed my pack and I ended up with way too much stuff. so needless to say this was a trip of learning.
and the learning began almost immediately after starting. my uncle had decided to bring a fanny-pack that also held 2 water bottles. now most backpacks will have a waist strap that will just about where a fanny-pack's strap would hit. so from beginning to end my uncle was fighting with both his pack and his water bottle holder. now my uncle's pack was quite old so he had a lot of rearranging to do in order to get all of his stuff to fit comfortably. another issue he had early on in the trip was getting his sleeping bag secured to outside of his pack without it swinging back and forth. first he tried just tying it on using a bit of rope he had. this caused the sleeping to swing crazily every time he took a step. next he tried using Velcro but he took maybe 2 steps and it came undone and fell of his pack entirely. he ended up tying to his pack in 4 different places just to get it to stay steady.
we finally arrived at the campground and had to set up our camp. we were sleeping in a tent that night so we had a little 2 person tent just big enough for the 2 of us to fit in it together. that is one thing about backpacking tents, they're small but incredibly light. we had the tent set up and we changed into the clothes we were going to sleep in so now it was time for dinner. we only had a little Colman one-burner stove to share. the water was taking forever to boil so while we waited we decided to start a fire. it had rained a few days before so most of the available wood was either wet or too green to burn. it was probably the most pathetic fire I have ever seen. but since our water wasn't boiling on the stove we decided to try to get hot by putting it on the fire. we still couldn't the water to boil but it got hot enough to rehydrate our food. the food was lukewarm but edible.
it was about 9 o'clock when we were getting ready for bed. as we were standing by our pitiful fire talking before bed we heard people walking into the campground. it was dark so we were a bit confused as to why such a big group was coming in so late. now most backpacking campgrounds and shelters have these poles called "bear poles". they have hooks that hang your pack out of reach of bears if they're in the area. generally you would want to camp as far from the bear pole as you can get. well not these people. they got into camp and immediately started setting up their tents in a semi-circle around the bear pole. as they were setting things up we heard one them say to the other " Hey, I found the instructions for the tents!" at this point, my uncle and I decided we had to stay up to watch this. it took them a half hour just to set up one tent which is pretty silly considering a backpacking tent only consists of two poles that criss-cross to stand the tent up. they had 3 tents to set up that night. so we ended up getting a late night that night. watching this group set up camp.