Campfire smoke
While at Hunting Island campground, my wife and I were eating dinner outside. All,of a sudden a continual cloud of eye watering smoke comes pouring around the front of the camper and under our awning....
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Our "campfire story"
We were camping one 4th of July and a young couple set up behind us. All they had was a dome tent and their car. The wife (I assume) was sitting in the tent looking out the scree door holding a miserable baby while her husband was trying to light a sire. I could tell they were newbies because he had a pile of 3" or 4" round logs .. no kindling, and he was dousing them with charcoal lighter fluid, lighting that, and standing back until the fluid burned out .. no fire, of course!
I decided I'd be a good Samaritan and went over with some kindling and my axe. Came to find out that they had never been camping before, and had just borrowed the tent from a friend. I gave him an extremely appreciated crash course in fire starting, split some of the logs, and helped him get a nice fore going.
Went back to tour trailer, talked it over with the boss, and since the mosquitoes were horrible, and the young wife had a fussy baby to deal with, and no place to sit, we loaned them our unused screened dining shelter that they could put over the picnic table (we have a screen enclosure that attaches to our awning roller, so we never use the screen house)
They were only staying the one night, and we left the site early to do some Geocaching, before they were up. I admit, I had some qualms about them possibly just packing up and leaving with the screen house, but when we got back in the PM, there it was on our table with a nice thank you note. I would bet they would have packed up after a couple of hours and left the night before if we hadn't helped out.
As for fire starter, I am always on the lookout for downed, dead birch trees where I can grab some birch bark, and I have a zip-lock bag full of it in my equipment. That's the best natural fire starter there is! Of course, we always camp in wooded areas so it's easy to gather some. If you have some kindling, even if it's wet, and a few square inches of birch bark, you can start a fire even in the rain. I used to do a lot of backpacking and we would gather some birch bark as we hiked to start our fire with each night.
We were camping one 4th of July and a young couple set up behind us. All they had was a dome tent and their car. The wife (I assume) was sitting in the tent looking out the scree door holding a miserable baby while her husband was trying to light a sire. I could tell they were newbies because he had a pile of 3" or 4" round logs .. no kindling, and he was dousing them with charcoal lighter fluid, lighting that, and standing back until the fluid burned out .. no fire, of course!
I decided I'd be a good Samaritan and went over with some kindling and my axe. Came to find out that they had never been camping before, and had just borrowed the tent from a friend. I gave him an extremely appreciated crash course in fire starting, split some of the logs, and helped him get a nice fore going.
Went back to tour trailer, talked it over with the boss, and since the mosquitoes were horrible, and the young wife had a fussy baby to deal with, and no place to sit, we loaned them our unused screened dining shelter that they could put over the picnic table (we have a screen enclosure that attaches to our awning roller, so we never use the screen house)
They were only staying the one night, and we left the site early to do some Geocaching, before they were up. I admit, I had some qualms about them possibly just packing up and leaving with the screen house, but when we got back in the PM, there it was on our table with a nice thank you note. I would bet they would have packed up after a couple of hours and left the night before if we hadn't helped out.
As for fire starter, I am always on the lookout for downed, dead birch trees where I can grab some birch bark, and I have a zip-lock bag full of it in my equipment. That's the best natural fire starter there is! Of course, we always camp in wooded areas so it's easy to gather some. If you have some kindling, even if it's wet, and a few square inches of birch bark, you can start a fire even in the rain. I used to do a lot of backpacking and we would gather some birch bark as we hiked to start our fire with each night.
