I woke that morning at around nine o'clock to a very chilly 40 degrees. I got up, got dressed, and got motivated in short order. First thing was first - the GigaStove kicked out some boiling water quickly and coffee was set to brewing in my french press.
Next up was my patented "camp slop" breakfast. Cook up some sausage links, remove them from the pan, add butter and some whipped eggs, salt, pepper, cheese. I then cut up the links into bite-sized pieces and tossed them back in with the eggs. Cook and scramble them all up together. Voila - camp slop. Breakfast of Champions.
Earl and I ate breakfast and set about getting ready for a day of hiking and trout fishing. Here are some pics:
Earl sets up some bait
Earl and the Conway
Me all ready to go
Back at camp before we leftWe spent about six hours or so hiking up and down the Conway River and casting into the few calm pools we could find. It had been raining on and off all week, so the river was up quite a bit. After the trip I looked into the Virginia website for Inland Game and Fisheries and found that we needed to go further up the river to find the trout. As it was, we hiked downstream from our camp.
Oh, well. It was nice to be out in Nature doing some fishing. Very Zen, very calming. We lost a lure and a hook/bobber set to branches and rocks. That's kind of par for the course for a day of fishing, though.
As we hiked along the river, we ran across a campsite that looked abandoned. It had an awesome rock firepit and there was even some cut firewood piled up. We decided to see if the place was still abandoned on our way back and then come back with the car for the firewood. I could easily make kindling from this stuff with my hatchet.
On the way back there was a family setting up for what looked like a picnic. We decided to come back towards dusk and see if they were still there. They were. Oh, well. We returned to our camp and began gathering firewood from the wooded slope just up from our camp.
We found plenty of firewood and even rolled a six foot cedar log down the hill. It was actually pretty dry. We used more cattail to start the fire, but this time used a three phase ignition system - cattail to trioxane bar to camp fuel. Fwoosh! Fire!
Sometime after we got back from our hike-n-fish, I went to grab my camera to snap a photo of something. I looked in my breast pocket, which is where I remembered putting the durned thing last. No dice. I patted myself down and then looked in my rucksack and tackle box. Shit!
I actually got a bit "panicked," thinking of the last place I used it on the hike. I remembered fishing from a large rock and having to cut my line after getting hung up on some rocks in the river. As I redid my line I snapped a photo of the river and put the camera down on the rock. I was almost certain I had picked it back up and placed it in my breast pocket. Crap! Had it fallen out at some point, maybe when I bent over to pick something up?
I gave up looking and decided that, on the way out, we'd have to stop by a few of our fishing spots and try to find it. It was about dinner time.
More brews, more grub, and some campfire hypnosis. We played Texas Hold 'Em since the wind had died down, but it was kinda silly since we didn't have any money or chips to bet with. Earl bet heavy and I always saw his "bet." Why the hell not? We followed that up with some War.
CONTINUED...
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