Went for a quick overnight camping trip to Fifteen Mile Creek Campground, located along the C&O Canal in western Maryland. I had a couple goals for this trip: testing out the Black Diamond Mega Light pyramid shelter and the MSR WhisperLite Universal stove, fly my new DJI Mavic Mini drone, and spend some time with family in an open, COVID-safe environment. You can read about my impressions of the shelter, stove, and drone on the gear reviews page.
We arrived in the dark, fortunately there was only one other group at the campground and my uncle had “Boy Scout burgers” on the fire, which turned out to be ground beef and a sliced onion wrapped in foil, topped by BBQ sauce when opened. They were pretty good, and I was glad to not have to deal with the production of making ramen. My tent/shelter set up quite quickly and I was impressed with how easy it was; this trip, I decided to bring my car camping cot for a bit of luxury, and to keep everything off the ground since the tent was a floorless shelter. I had camped in a tarp shelter in Utah before and was annoyed at the sand that got into and around my sleeping bag. I also half inflated my winter sleeping pad and put that on top. Check out my article with tips for sleeping warm and comfortable in the winter.
Over some home distilled whiskey, also known as hooch, we reminisced about our bike trip during the summer, discussed micro economics, and some other unprintable subjects. I tried a few night photos with my Sony a6000 mirrorless camera and wide angle/fast lens, which is super easy to use for night or astro photography and produces some impressive shots (at least to me). I had done some research earlier that day using the PhotoPills app, which told me that there would be full lunar illumination all night, and therefore terrible for astrophotography of stars, but great for taking pictures of landscape.
I slept off and on, but mostly warm in my Mountain Hardware Hotbed Torch zero degree bag with a hat, base layer, and wool socks down into the upper 20s. I did have to air down my pad partway through the night, I always tend to overinflate it and it’s uncomfortable. Overall I was quite pleased with the setup, and I could have cinched the tent closer to the ground to reduce the drafts during the breezy night if I had needed to.
The next morning, we made Breakfast Ramen on my MSR Whisperlite Universal, which took me a couple tries to get lit and burning, but performed great in the low 30s.
Breakfast Ramen:
- two eggs, boiled for 6.5 minutes then submerged in cold water and peeled to create a soft gooey consistency in the yolk
- noodles, boiled separately then set aside
- mushrooms, onions, garlic, whatever else you have sautéed in oil
- soy sauce, miso, dumped into the vegetables after a few minutes and before anything burns
- water or broth as available, brought to a simmer
- pour broth over noodles and an egg in each pot. serves two.
After finishing up breakfast, we went on a quick walk along the towpath; most of the canal had frozen over with a thin layer of ice which made a cool sound when you broke ice off and tossed it onto the frozen over top. The canal also has old telegraph poles along it, and we searched for some glass insulators but didn’t find any. One cool thing about the Potomac is how different it is in different parts… like all rivers I guess. Anyway, down by the Chesapeake Bay, it is flat and wide and slow, its fast and violent and dances among the rocks at Great Falls, just north of DC, and up here in Western Maryland, it seems a lot smaller and quieter.
Anyway, as it was Tuesday and we wanted to get back to DC, we did a quick drone flight and my cousin tried flying it. Drone flights are not allowed in National Parks, so we stuck to the parking lot and didn’t really fly around. I also wanted to let my cousin try out flying it. No crashes and although I lost partial comms with the bird towards the end. We didn’t see the tire marks from someone doing donuts from the ground, but it’s clear from the overhead drone shot, just a cool example of thing you see when you are looking at them from a new perspective.
Overall it was a good trip of course, I accomplished my goals of testing out some new gear and spending time with family. And we were all back in less than 24hrs.