Nice Camps!

Red Lily wrote:Ahh the memories.  I guess we all have them and I look back on roughing it with a smile but I'm older now and prefer the comforts in life.

I can do without a lot of things in life but I like the basic comforts now and think I've earned them.

I want to live in an isolated place, but not without power and some creature comforts , good food is always at the top of my list, and reliable transport

I had my container moved yesterday , It was a bit of a mission but get they in the end. $800 later lol

vege57 wrote:

Red Lily wrote:Ahh the memories.  I guess we all have them and I look back on roughing it with a smile but I'm older now and prefer the comforts in life.

I can do without a lot of things in life but I like the basic comforts now and think I've earned them.

I want to live in an isolated place, but not without power and some creature comforts , good food is always at the top of my list, and reliable transport

I had my container moved yesterday , It was a bit of a mission but get they in the end. $800 later lol

Isolation I can handle and rather like!  I don't particularly like looking out at neighbors.  But blocks are surveyed differently here and even on 5 acres you can't generally see your neighbors unless you've denuded the land of trees.

I'd need an indoor toilet and shower, hot and cold running water on tap and power either from the grid or solar or a combination of both, backup for blackouts and gas for cooking.  Shopping for most things within a 20 minute drive.  All that and I'd be happy.

HawkTheSlayer wrote:
When I was a kid, I camped at this building on an inside curve of the river on the higher river ridge. It had only a big kitchen and two small bedrooms with bunks. But it had a large screened porch facing the river and a smaller, open porch on the woods side.

Wood heater, wood stove, kerosene lanterns , block ice.
Took a whole day to go 10 miles through the woods to get there in 4 wheel drive whinching all the way cause the ruts in the road would never dry under the old growth canopy.

We kids loved it.
Our job was to get out in the mud and hook the cable to the tree and then make sure it was rolled back on the spool properly, only to do it all over again in 5 minutes while the men drank beer the whole way and stayed in the truck or jeep. Lol.

The camp being on the inside bend of the river, when the water was low there was about a 100 acre sandbar right outside the camp. Sometimes smaller. Sometimes larger.
We could fish, play in the sand, swim in the shallows as a sandbar is very predictable in slope with few drop offs.

When you went back there to hunt, it was I usually for 5-9days . You couldn't just come and go in a half hour on a limestone road like today.

Lord the stories from back there.

No propane, no generators, Coleman lanterns did replace kerosene. Peace and quiet. Some camps had 12 volt DC bulbs!  Just hook to a battery or truck.

The only noise was the occasional swish of the barges and then the diesel engines of the tug.

Good times.

It comes down to what you knew as a kid.

I knew the New England and Great Lakes regions.

Up until I was 10, we'd spend three weeks in June on a lake in the Adirondack Preserve. No Great Camp for us - it was trusty ol' Cabin 7 at Poplar Point. On Racquette Lake...an interesting glacial lake about two miles long, looking like a starburst, with 99 miles of shoreline. And DEEP - if you went into the water, you'd better know how to swim, because the bottom dropped away, fast.

Mail delivery up there was by boat, not truck. A big old Chris-Craft wooden inboard that the mailman had...I expect he was paid by the Post Office, but that boat was definitely not government property. And he'd pull right up to our dock. Which was about six feet out from shore. Not a danger of hitting his rudder on anything, not on deep Otter Bay.

Heat was by wood stove. The cabin had two bedrooms, a bath and kitchen.

Black flies provided the evening excitement. Nope, no television up there. Not in the 1960s. My old man liked it that way...from 1950 to 1967, he and my mother went up there. It was about 75 miles from her childhood home.

That went away, with progress - the owner died and the son-in-law took over, raised rents, wanted only seasonal tenants. So we started building a cabin on Lake Chautauqua, other end of the state.

That lake was shallow where Racquette Lake was deep; and long, and with a flat shoreline. Yet it was much the same - only without the wood heat; the fire insurance rates with a wood stove were unbelievable. So we'd spend weekends up there, and then for three years, out of school, I worked across the lake at the Chautauqua Institute. Which is as much a summer village as a cultural center.

Times change; and now I'm enjoying the dry Western air...but frankly, while Montana is breathtaking, I'm missing the deep, lush vegetation that grows only in the East. I wouldn't want to swat mosquitoes, today; or deal with the hot saturated July air...but I have my memories. Chautauqua Lake had a steamboat in operation - a replica, after rebuilding the last surviving steamboat failed in 1967 (hull was steel; built in 1890 and it was just too corroded for them to repair). Listening to it chuff down the lake, evenings, around the fire ring...memories, of a good life, most of it still ahead for me.

Red Lily wrote:

vege57 wrote:

Red Lily wrote:Ahh the memories.  I guess we all have them and I look back on roughing it with a smile but I'm older now and prefer the comforts in life.

I can do without a lot of things in life but I like the basic comforts now and think I've earned them.

I want to live in an isolated place, but not without power and some creature comforts , good food is always at the top of my list, and reliable transport

I had my container moved yesterday , It was a bit of a mission but get they in the end. $800 later lol

Isolation I can handle and rather like!  I don't particularly like looking out at neighbors.  But blocks are surveyed differently here and even on 5 acres you can't generally see your neighbors unless you've denuded the land of trees.

I'd need an indoor toilet and shower, hot and cold running water on tap and power either from the grid or solar or a combination of both, backup for blackouts and gas for cooking.  Shopping for most things within a 20 minute drive.  All that and I'd be happy.

""But blocks are surveyed differently here and even on 5 acres you can't generally see your neighbors unless you've denuded the land of trees.""

Im on 13.5 acres and neighbors are still fucken annoying

As far as toilets go, I don't enjoy crapping in a hole lol. so a good bathroom is a must

I was on 300 acres right in the middle of a 92,000 acre state forest and I still had neighbors show up on horseback while I was outside enjoying the sun (nude) LOL

Shit happens.

vege57 wrote:

Red Lily wrote:

vege57 wrote:

Red Lily wrote:Ahh the memories.  I guess we all have them and I look back on roughing it with a smile but I'm older now and prefer the comforts in life.

I can do without a lot of things in life but I like the basic comforts now and think I've earned them.

I want to live in an isolated place, but not without power and some creature comforts , good food is always at the top of my list, and reliable transport

I had my container moved yesterday , It was a bit of a mission but get they in the end. $800 later lol

Isolation I can handle and rather like!  I don't particularly like looking out at neighbors.  But blocks are surveyed differently here and even on 5 acres you can't generally see your neighbors unless you've denuded the land of trees.

I'd need an indoor toilet and shower, hot and cold running water on tap and power either from the grid or solar or a combination of both, backup for blackouts and gas for cooking.  Shopping for most things within a 20 minute drive.  All that and I'd be happy.

""But blocks are surveyed differently here and even on 5 acres you can't generally see your neighbors unless you've denuded the land of trees.""

Im on 13.5 acres and neighbors are still fucken annoying

As far as toilets go, I don't enjoy crapping in a hole  lol. so a good bathroom is a must

I had a dart board on the inside of the outhouse door.
No internet back then.

I don't use the internet, or read, on the toilet. Must be one of those weird 'woman' things.