cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ida Goes Camping I forgot to mention in my last entry that Ida and I tried camping on Saturday night. She's been bugging me to take her camping for ages now and it was finally warm enough in the evenings. She's 4 years old. So I thought it would be best to keep it simple. I asked her to show me where she would like to set up the tent and she took me to a spot about 2 yards from the house. Ok then. We pitched one of my tents and prepared a little fire pit. As dusk approached, we cooked dinner in the coals of the fire. Then it started raining so we went into the tent. Ida wrapped herself up in her sleeping bag and we wound up my little hand-cranked shortwave radio. After 10 minutes or so, the rains stopped and we went back outside. The fire was still doing fine. We made smores. Then Ida decided that this had been quite enough excitement for one night and went inside to watch a movie with Trish. That's fine. Honestly, I never really figured she would end up actually sleeping out there on her first go. Again, she's 4. When she's ready we'll try again. She said yesterday that she wants to go camping again, but this time out in our woods by the fire ring that I showed her near the stream. Today I ordered a muzzle-loader from Cabelas. Nothing fancy or expensive. Bob and I decided over the weekend that the thing to do this year in terms of hunting elk is to get out there on opening weekend of the muzzle-loader season rather than the modern firearms season. I won't say that things were exactly crowded last year on opening day of the regular season, but there were in fact other people out there. In fact, a boat landed only about 40 yards from our camp an hour before dawn. There were at least a few other hunters around, which probably spooked off any elk that had been around. Not to mention putting deer on their guard. Not as many people hunt the black powder muzzle loader season so I think that'll be the way to go. We'll get closer to the peak of the rut as well. I don't have much experience with these types of rifles, which is I figured it would be best to order one now rather than waiting until the season is looming. I'll need the summer to practice loading, shooting and maintaining the rifle. The only sketchy thing about this is that I'll only have the one rifle. Normally on a hunt that far out in the wilderness where I'm spending 6-7 hours just getting out there, I would bring 2 rifles in case something goes wrong with my primary weapon. It would fucking suck to do all the work to get out there and then have a rifle break on me without a back-up. I'll be doing 2 big hunting trips this year, I suppose. The elk trip with Bob and then I'll do another one during the regular firearms season with my new Remington 700 XCR. I'm not sure where to go with the XCR during the regular season. I'm thinking someplace different, some place remote. That's a really light, handy, weatherproof rifle. Good for rough country. 17:08 - 2008-04-21 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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