Day Trip to Conrad Weiser

I took today off for a dentist appointment this morning, then a day trip to the Port Clinton Tract of the Conrad Weiser State Forest in the afternoon. I had a few goals on today's trip, the first of which was to locate the campsite where I did an aborted overnighter back in January, and locate a spot close to it on a trail. I succeeded in both, and marked the trail spot on both my phone in Spyglass and in my Garmin GPS.

The second goal was to practice putting up a shelter, which I did in the form of a poncho hooch.

I used my trekking poles in combination with a USGI-style poncho, a couple bungie cords, and some orange utility cord to build the lean-to. If I'd used a more subdued cord, it would have been very stealthy in these woods.

My next goal was to try out the Esbit cookset seen sitting in front of the hooch in the first picture. I bought it a few months ago but this was the first time I got a chance to try it. I like it. It's well made and lightweight. I used it with the included Trangia-style alcohol burner, using denatured alcohol from Lowe's. It can also be used with Esbit hexamine fuel tablets. Today I used it to boil water for coffee.

The final goal was to shoot some video with the Panasonic HC-W580K video camera I got in May. It, too can be seen sitting in the top picture, aimed at the Esbit set. I took over an hour of video which I need to edit down, but it looks good on my Mac.

Between the Esbit cookset and the video camera, I needed a bit more space than my Hill People Gear Tarahumara daypack had available. So, I attached a USGI surplus MOLLE sustainment pouch to the Tara's compression straps. This worked out fine.

Once I get the video edited and uploaded to YouTube, I'll post a link.

Edit 8/7/16: The video is up here.