June Highlights

We've been keeping busy, trying to get stuff done before our trip but also get out and have some fun - gotta keep moving! We went up to Bethany, DE where our friend's Roy & Yoli have a house. Here's Bob and Roy planting a dogwood tree.


Anna had a chance to try her hand at turning a big ol' chunk of cherry wood into a rough bowl. It was very green (soft and wet) so relatively easy to turn. The rough bowl is now in a paper bag for 6 months drying itself out. Next fall she'll try to fine tune it.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bob has been sewing up a sil-nylon storm these past few weeks. He ordered a bunch of silicon impregnated rip-stop nylon and other supplies from Outdoor Wilderness Fabrics and has sewn like 10 stuff sacks/ditty bags, 2 backpack covers, and the two big projects pictured: awning extenders for the van (for shade or rain protection) and a lightweight 8x10 emergency tarp.

Here's a detail of the sewing on the tarp - a reinforcement patch with the tab pull-out sewn in and rigged with a trekking pole. The store bought version of this (which we examined at REI the other day and Bob's is virtually identical) costs $145. I think we saved money, even with the 4 hours of Bob's time to make it.


Bob is smiling because he FINALLY got to go sailing this year. We rented a Flying Scot from Belle Haven Marina and zipped around the Potomac for a few hours. It was breezy, and Anna was her usual squealing self! We both had fun.

The yard is in full late June bloom and looking quite nice...

Backpacking in Shenandoah National Park

This will be our last backpack before our summer trip... last time to shake out some new gear! It was hot and buggy and the poison ivy was very healthy indeed.



We came across two bear cubs climbing a tree. Mama-bear was no where to be seen so we think she was at the base of the tree (out of our view) coaching her babies. We also saw some cool butterflies, including this one...


Here is our very cool and super-light-weight new tent. It's called a "TarpTent" and weighs in at under 3 pounds, which is really incredible for a huge 3-person tent. It's set up with the trekking pole option, but it also comes with it's own traditional style tent poles. We also dehydrated our food ourselves - each of our packs weighed in at just under 20 pounds!

Bob taking a break next to the stream. Speaking of water, we also ditched our heavy MSR water filter and used a 2-part water treatment called AquaMira. It takes 15 minutes for it to kill all the bad stuff before you can drink it. We each drank plenty of water treated this way and neither of us got sick.