With that it was getting close to time for my visitors, so I used some PJ cottonballs to ignite some kindling.
They burn well and for a couple minutes, which is usually more than enough time to get a good fire built. Everything I grabbed was so wet I had a very difficult time keeping it going. I even used my road flare! Not much luck. Its hard to tell, but that's water boiling out the end of my burning branch
The bottom line on this is I need to get better at finding dry wood for my fires.
I ended up filling my fire pit in and declaring that a loss for this trip. Luckily it wasn't a necessity for cooking or heat. One of my sister's and my fiancee arrived with some bottled water for me before I did that, but quickly abandoned the site due to the mosquitoes, as I mentinoned. I got a good laugh a bit later though, they sent my dad back with this:
I honestly didn't think they were that bad! That was pretty well the end of my day there though. I accomplished all I could, got physically drained from near constant activity in the heat, and decided to kick back in my tent for a round of solitaire. I woke up to a text message some time later, and decided it was best just to go back to sleep. All told, 10 hours racked out in the wilderness. I got up at 0530 this morning and started breaking camp. Once I was all packed up I made breakfast.
Oatmeal and coffee, warmed and cooked with the Coleman Peak1 micro backpacking stove I won as "rookie of the year" on anothe forum. Its now my preferred method for cooking in the bush. If my estimates are correct, it has a burn time as good or better than an equivalent weight and bulk of fuel tabs, with more impressive output. I enjoyed the coffee as my stove cooled, quickly stowed those few things, and was on my way. And so ends my trip, hopefully I didn't put too many of you to sleep.
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