Girl Camping in the Pennsylvania Wilds

The weather was expected to be quite nice for the week following Easter, with cool nights on Sunday and Monday, and increasingly warm temps later in the week. Cool nights are backpack weather, so on Monday morning, my husband and I packed up our gear, and around lunchtime, into the woods of Moshannon State Forest we went.

This is the campsite that we can typically get into, but have some difficulty finding the trail back out without ending up doing some serious bushwhacking. So we came up with the strategy of tying a Walmart bag around a tree as a marker for where the deer path begins amid the rhododendron thickets.

On our last trip back out in the fall, we couldn't find the bag, so it spent winter in the PA wilds. This time, we found it and removed it when we walked out. I can't believe it made it through the whole winter on that tree!

The hardest part is actually putting your pack on for the first time. My husband usually puts my pack on me, as I can't lift it myself. Yes, I carry 40+ pounds of stuff on my back! I could barely drag the pack across the forest floor, but once I had it on, I was stooped . . . but walking!

We hiked into our campsite and by about three in the afternoon, I was starting to put my tent up. This is my tent you see in the photo above, with all of my gear in it, including my little bedtime outfit laid out on my sleeping bag.

To the right is my boxy, retro, blue external frame Kelty pack, courtesy of L.L. Bean in the late 1980s. (I paid a whole $48.50 for it! I think I got my money's worth!) The pink mini cooler was my sister Barb's; it is quite festive, don't you think!

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about the rest of the gear, but we've got:
*one groundsheet, about the footprint of the tent, under the tent
*the tent
*two thin blankets laid down as flooring
*two flat sleeping pads
*one bright green blow-up sleeping pad (hello, Big Agnes!)
*one fleece sack (that I put Big Agnes into so she doesn't get scraped up)
*one bamboo pillow
*one sleeping bag, which as it turns out, wasn't sufficient for the 30-degree temps we had overnight (I woke up freezing at 1:30 a.m.!)

We had packed ham and cheese sandwiches, tiny oranges, grapes, snack bars, yogurt, peanuts, and an assortment of snacks for our trip, as well as whatever drinks we wanted. Also: music! For we like to sit around camp and jam to the tunes.

We heard the thumping of ruffed grouse throughout the day, but other than that, it was mostly quiet. But then around 9 p.m. the woodrats came; or some kind of rodent. They sort of trolled their way through, making noise, truffling around with things on the ground.

Now, the one time I camped here, I had one get into my backpack and chew some stuff up overnight. (See story here and here.) So, wiser girl this time, I tucked my backpack into my tent for overnight. (Yes, there's room!)

Around 10:30, I was thinking about crawling into my bag, but I wanted to brush my teeth first. By the light of a flickering headlamp, I grabbed what I thought was toothpaste, put it on my toothbrush. YUCK! This toothpaste tastes AWFUL!!!

Well, guess what: it wasn't toothpaste, but Dr. Sheffield's anti-itch cream. I scrubbed my mouth with antihistamine! My lips went numb about 10 minutes later. I did not actually swallow any, but spat it all out and rinsed out my mouth and then used actual toothpaste. (I am happy to report that my mouth was more itch-free than it's ever been in my life!)

This was the story of day 1 of our backpack. Tune in tomorrow for day 2! Oh, and here is my soundtrack song. For girls DO go camping, they DO have their own tents, and they DO have lots of fun in the woods if they want to! My soundtrack song is Cyndi Lauper, with Girls Just Want To Have Fun.