Sunday, August 23, 2009

Shenandoah Bound


My wife was headed up to the great white north so my buddy Amtrak & decided to hit the Shenandoah Mountains in Virginia for a two night camping and hiking trip. Whenever I hear the word Shenandoah I am reminded of an Upright Citizens Brigade skit called John Denver Fan club that my buddy T-Bone turned me on to.

We headed out of DC early on Friday to beat the traffic which in hindsight is pretty much impossible. We hit the road at 4:00 for what should take a little under three hours took us more like four and half hours. This of course meant we arrived at dusk with no fire wood and no camp site set up. We can plan all we want but when it comes to the execution part we can't time anything correctly. We grabbed some wood from the ranger station and proceeded to attempt to start a fire. The problem was the wood from the rangers was wet. We went through an entire Washington Post weekend edition, no small feet but this fire just didn't want to start. At that point we started to panic a bit and started foraging for anything we could burn. I even sucked up my pride and went to a nearby campsite in search of some lighter fluid. I didn't find any lighter fluid but the nice folks next door poured us a tall cup full of Camp Fuel. I've never even heard of camping fuel but they recommended we wad up some paper towels and step back. Even the paper towels soaked in camping fuel weren't working so we decided to give it one final push. We grabbed everything that would light form the car including maps, receipts, beer cases an empty granola bar box, toilet paper and parer towels. We then doused everything in Camping Fuel as well as soaking some of the wet wood in the fuel. Not surprisingly the fire lit this time.

We managed to get the tent set up in the dark. Amtrak was in charge of food and I was in charge of the tent and the beverages. Comparatively speaking my portion was decidedly easier and yet exceptionally unimpressive. Amtrak on the other hand went hog wild with the food. Since it took us about 2 hours to start the fire we were playing catch up on the cooking so we decided to forgo the sausages and just heated up some kind of crazy taco dip Amtrak dreamed up. This was no ordinary 7 layer dip. The dip starts off with a layer of taco meat, salsa verde, a layer of hot jalapenos and then refried beans. This then goes in the freezer to firm up. After that you repeat layer one through four and top it off with a giant dousing of cheese and freeze the whole thing. Once we got this thing heated up we added sour cream and gaucamole and pulled out some tasty tortilla chips which acted as the taco dip vessel. It was heavenly, delicious and scary all at once. I really wish I took a picture of this.

The next morning we got up and headed out on a six mile hike. We just about walked into a black bear on the hike which almost made me lose my taco dip. The bear however was more interested in eating berries and didn't pay much attention to us. We also ran into a few dear on the hike. All in all we saw about 30 dear in the park.

After our experience with starting the fire on night one we ended up getting about 5 bundles of wood and purchased some good old fashioned lighter fluid. We promised ourselves we wouldn't go through the same thing twice so this time we started a huge fire which we burned for about six hours. Amtrak pulled out some double cut pork chops rubbed with crushed ground fennel seeds, fresh garlic, salt, pepper and some olive oil. This was anything but typical camping food but it's exactly what we needed after a good hike and it was the best pork chop I've ever had.

Shenandoah in August is awesome! Just remember your Camp Fuel.

1 comment:

  1. You fill up my _______ Like a night in the ______. Like a _______ in springtime
    Like a walk in the ______...

    ReplyDelete