High on the Hog on Catoctin Mountain

Wild Blueberries

Wild Raspberries

Wild Raspberries

Sassafras

Yesterday we went for a hike on Catoctin Mountain, which is in Maryland near Thurmont. We usually hike to Wolf Rock, as we did yesterday. It is a short (1.3 miles from the visitor center), fairly strenuous hike. Most people go to Cunningham Falls when they go to Catoctin but we don’t think too much about that. We call Cunningham Falls Cunningham Drip or Cunningham Trickle. Perhaps we went at the wrong time when last we visited.

In any case, on our hike, we saw a lots of wild blueberries and raspberries. We ate some of the ripe blueberries, which were pretty good and also noticed some sassafras. We were really hungry on the way back, so we picked some more blueberries and ate them and this reminded us of Survivorman – a show about a man who goes out into various wildernesses and survives for a week at a time. He always has to eat whatever he can get, which is sometimes something like a flattened rabbit.

Anyway, we just thought that if we had to survive on Catoctin Mountain, we would at least have some blueberries and sassafras tea 🙂 Hope you like the pictures!

Survivorman Show Review

Survivorman is a show where Les Stroud (he calls himself “Survivorman”) goes out into the wild where no one else is and survives there for 7 days. He films the whole episode by himself. He goes into places like the a Georgian Swamp, the Kalahari Desert, and a Canadian Forest. His camera crew drops him off and then he is on his own until they pick him up seven days later.

While Survivorman is surviving, he usually eats a lot of plants and berries and sometimes he catches small animals. He also usually sets up a shelter of some kind, depending on what environment he’s in. Survivorman is VERY good at surviving because he knows a lot of plants that you can eat and he also knows a lot of survival tricks. This show is very entertaining and on a scale from one to ten I would rate it a ten and Dink would rate it ten as well.

by John

UCO Stormproof Matches. New Item for Camping Trips!

We just bought another item off of Ebay to use while camping. These matches are stormproof (windproof and waterproof). You can literally hold them under water and they will stay lit. They are easy to light and stay lit for fifteen seconds. Since we haven’t opened this product yet, we can’t rate it, but the reviews say that they work very well. They also say that they smell really bad while burning, but that doesn’t matter as long as they stay lit under harsh conditions. We saw some matches like these on the show “Survivorman”. They may have even been these exact matches! Anyway, we can hardly wait to use these while camping this spring and summer.

by Dink

Coghlan’s Flint Striker Review

Last summer when we went camping we wanted to see if we could use a flint striker to start our fire. We brought a Coghlan’s flint striker and we were able not only to light our fire, but we also lit our lantern and mosquito repelling candles. In order to get the original fire going, we did use magnesium, Purell, a couple of paper towels, and dead leaves, and it still took us about half an hour to get it going. Once we did get it going, though, it was very satisfying to sit back and watch the fire that we just spent thirty minutes making.

Anyway, we were very pleased with the flint striker. This product includes a metal striker, but you can also use the back of your pocket knife. I recommend this product highly for hardy campers. One interesting thing that we noticed was that the side of the flint striker and flint rod that you use effects it. For example, if you use the top side of the striker and the top side of the flint rod and you notice that it is not making any sparks, you might want to flip either the striker or the flint over and try again. I know this sounds like it’s just my imagination, but it really matters which sides you use. If it’s not making sparks, it could also be the layer of paint that they put on the rod. You have to scrape the paint off before striking.

Anyway, I hope you find this helpful. If you’re planning to go camping this summer, then you might want to consider buying this product, which you can do here. If you do end up buying it or any other flint striker on the market to take camping, remember this: bring magnesium or some other tinder starter with you, because it is VERY difficult to start a fire without magnesium, unless the leaves you are using are REALLY dry. Believe me, because we had to use Purell, magnesium, a paper towel, and leaves to get it going and it still took a half hour. One last thing I’ll say is you might want to watch a video of somebody using a flint striker. We watched Survivorman and that was helpful to us.

by Dink