Sandbar Camping

The River Rat Ranger takes a break from his float trip journal to express his opinion on sandbar camping. There is one main advantage to it and one main disadvantage. And they are both the same thing – sand. Sand is smooth, soft underfoot, easy to drive tent stakes into, easy to dig in. And it is at the same time a gritty mess. It WILL get into your food, your clothes and your bed despite all you do to avoid it. It adds a whole new dimension to eating my favorite breakfast food, grits. Nonetheless, it can be handy. A fistful of sand will scour the cooked-on food out of any fry pan or pot. Just be sure to rinse it out with boiling water, remember where that sand has been.

One major problem with camping in sand is the useless teeny wire tent stakes that come with almost all tents. Long ones are needed. The picture shows boughten and homemade. The purchased type on the left are heavy steel and can be driven into rock. They are the only thing that will work in rocky conditions such as Big Bend National and State parks in Texas. They cost 50 cents at Sprawl Mart and about a buck in campground stores. Their major disadvantage is the weight... a full set for my Wenzel Starlite weighs more than the tent, poles, and ground cloth! Homemade such as are pictured weigh much less, are made on the spot, and cost nothing but your time. However, it is illegal to cut green trees in some wilderness areas. They work well, though and look “woodsy”. Beware the ones shown in camping handbooks that are made with a notch cut out near the top instead of utilizing a side branch. They always, always, ALWAYS break right at the notch as they are driven in. Also, many ultralight tents have only tiny loops for the stakes and the notched type won't fit. But the side branch style can be driven in next to the loop with the “hook” going down into it.

One good plan for keeping as much sand as possible out of food and gear is to pull the boat up onto the bar and flip it over. Yes, it will be sandy, but a few buckets of river water will sluice the sand off and you now have a stable convenient mostly sand free table to cook on and roll up bedding, etc. This is where the jon boat shines compared to a canoe. Also, try to curl up under a canoe during a gale force hailstorm sometime. You'll be a jon boat convert forever.

A few words about picking out a sandbar. First, make sure it's sand. In Midwestern rivers there are as many mudbars as sandbars. Step off onto a fresh, wet mudbar and you will be lucky to escape at all and for certain it will swallow your rubber boots. Secondly, be certain it's high enough above the water. Even small rivers can rise several feet during the night. You don't want to have to swim out of your tent in the dark of night and try to catch your gear before it floats away. Or your boat. Which is why when the likely sand bar that pops up round the bend at dusk is fairly low to the surface of the water, tie the boat to a tree on shore or a large log. As all my gear is in buckets or my waterproof bag, I endeavor to run the bow or stern line (on boats it's “line” not “rope”) through all the handles of the buckets, strap of the bag and the handles of the water carriers, tying it to the last one. Now, should the river rise rapidly and you're suddenly wet and struggling in the dark, the only gear you have to worry about is yourself and your tent. You'll be wet. You'll be miserable. But you'll be alive and have everything you arrived with. The tent will pull easily from the wet sand. Tumble into the boat with it. Drag your other stuff aboard and count your blessings.

Always fasten your boat wherever you camp. “Johnny Sneakum” is alive and well in rural America and nothing seems quite so funny to such a character as to push a camper's boat into the stream and watch it float away. Bow and stern lines can also be cut or “borrowed” so I have a light anchor chain permanently padlocked to the bow and lock the other end to an immovable object. The two padlocks are keyed the same and the key NEVER leaves my person if I have to wear it on a string around my neck.

Sandbars are also wonderful places to build fires. Just scoop out a depression in the sand and you have a fireplace out of the wind. There is one more advantage. In most states in America, the banks on each side of the river are privately owned. It can be criminal trespass to camp on them. But sandbars, being in the river bed are usually considered public property. On smaller streams the landowner also controls the river bed and thus the sandbars, but the water belongs to the public. Most states allow “reasonable” trespass for the purpose of seeking out portages, checking out rapids, etc. This may not include the right to camp by the letter of the law, but the float tripper has a couple more things going for him. One is that the landowner has to be able to get to where you are and order you to move. The other is that very few float trip canoes, jon boats, or inflatable rafts have lights, making operation after dark not only dangerous, but illegal. Speaking as a part time sheriff's deputy, no cop wants to drag campers from a sandbar, take them in, house them in the jail overnight, inventory and secure their gear, be laughed at by the judge in the morning, and get chewed out by their boss. The worst that could be likely to happen is that the irate landowner will call the sheriff and be told that if the camper is still there the next morning to call him back. Or if the deputy or DNR man actually is dragged out to the campsite, they will tell you to move on come daybreak and likely be envious of you and want to chat. I've befriended DNR men all over the state. Once had one for a backup at a shooting incident. They like camping. They like river rats and they're usually rangers themselves. Only once in my life have I ran across a landowner who stridently said I couldn't camp on his land. My son and I talked gently and respectfully and took the time to get to know him and he invited us to stay wherever we wanted.

There is only one more trespass issue. That is if you should happen to stumble across someone's pot plantation or meth lab site. In this case you may be threatened with violence. It has never happened to me, but I've heard of it. The cell phone is your best defense in these situations. In fact, it has changed the whole face of backwoods travel. Johnny Sneakum never knows anymore if the person he is harassing is already in contact with the law. Many times just the sight of a cell phone is enough to back down belligerence. If you are a purist who doesn't want to carry one, buy one that doesn't work on a garage sale and gut it, using the inside as a storage place for waterproof matches.

Need I add in closing that you deeply bury all garbage and human waste and put out your fire totally, burying the burned sticks and ashes and leave only tracks and take only memories? It's the Ranger Way.

The Big River Trip Continues

The RRR returns to his journal for the big River Trip. When we last looked at the story. It was Sunday May 20th. I'd found a spot by a field at the top of a tall scramble up the bank. I learned several things that night. First, the Wenzel Starlite tent might be CALLED a 1 and ½ man tent, but they would have to be 1 ½ very small men. It was so tiny that I could not turn around inside it. So when bedtime came I was obliged to lie on my back with my feet facing the doorway and wriggle in as though putting on a pair of pants. I could see right away there was going to be a problem for a man my size... 6'2” and 270 lbs... to follow the manufacturer's instructions and not allow myself or any gear to touch the roof or walls in case of rain.
But in the meantime I was cooking supper. I made noodle soup and decided to thicken it by adding three powdered eggs. Mistake. The bubbling soup foamed up and over the edge of the pan and put out the stove. This is not good thing in the encroaching darkness as mosquitoes diving in to the attack. Then I compounded my problems by putting too much water into my biscuit mix bag and making a watery goo instead of biscuit dough. I should say that I had put enough biscuit mix for one meal into separate zip lock freezer bags. Theoretically, I only had to add a little water and knead the bag and squeeze out the dough. Obviously it does not always happen exactly that way. So I poured the watery gruel into a hot greased fry pan and cooked it quickly into a sort of cracker like mess which served the purpose in the soup that had remained in the pot. I made sure to mark my territory in three spots around the tent to discourage other large predators and slithered into bed. That was the end of Day One.
I was awake by 0600. The birds were telling me exactly what they thought of someone who would still be in bed at such a late hour. The mosquitoes were not nearly so enthusiastic this morning. There are only two sure repellents for the little vampire bugs in my experience. 100 percent DEET and smoke from a fire. I didn't want to build a fire. I try to avoid it when “borrowing” a campsite on private property. So liberally doused with DEET, I prepared breakfast and broke camp. Mrs. RRR and I discovered in desert camping that it makes sense to have an almost liquid breakfast so that only one pot needs cleaned. While the little Coleman stove sputtered away still burning out the previous night's spillage, I mixed a cup of powdered milk in my Sierra cup. Colin Fletcher always used a Sierra cup, so I must also, right? Then my juice... powdered Gatorade. Wiping the cup clean, I put in two pouches of Quaker Instant Grits.
Grits! What are grits? I can hear my yankee and foreign readers asking. While my southern purists are demanding, Instant! Who would eat instant grits? Well, my rebel friends, they're a whole lot quicker and easier on the trail. My other readers should know that grits are a variation of “cold flour”, the original trail food. It is the predecessor of all instant cereals and such foods. Everything from Malto-Meal to Hamburger Helper to Bisquick can trace it's ancestry to cold flour. Grits are a staple of life in the south and almost unknown elsewhere. Both sides of the civil war marched and fought on cold flour. It was part of the provisions of every exploratory company in the west and in every wagon of wagon trains and in every cowboy's saddle bag. Hominy, first cooked, then ground like flour and some sugar or spices sometimes added is what cold flour and now grits consist of.
So I added boiling water and mixed to the right consistency. And what is the right consistency? Go to any Waffle House diner of which I've already waxed eloquent on occasion in these pages and order a dish of grits. Tell them the River Rat Ranger sent you. Then add butter. And you're snacking like Kit Carson, Joe Walker, Major Drummond, and Lewis and Clark did. John Wayne has nothing on you.
Once the grits were down; my favorite breakfast is Cheddar Cheese and Country bacon, one pouch of each with Parkay squeezed on; I began to make coffee. I am a coffee snob. Not a purist, mind you, but a snob. I had with me a pound of Columbian Supremo roasted whole beans. I set the tiny backpacker's coffee grinder on coarse and ground and shook and ground and shook. The shaking seems silly till you remember the historically ludicrous but detail accurate film, Dances With Wolves. The young officer makes coffee for the Indians the first time by grinding the beans in an old fashioned wood and cast iron coffee grinder and hops about shaking it as he does so. At last my coffee was ground. I tipped the fresh ground delight into my cook pot. The water had stayed cold because I dipped the fleece covered canteen into the river the night before making it an evaporative cooler. I lit the stove and sat the pan on and very quickly the mixture started to bubble. I raised it a couple times when it began to foam, then set it off the fire and splashed in a dollop of cold water to settle the grounds. THAT, my readers, is coffee. I've tried instant. I've tried the coffee bags. NOTHING is like fresh ground Columbian Supremo boiled in a pot in the out-of-doors.
Then I had to get the gear down to the boat. I took a long piece of parachute cord and put through the handle of each bucket and swung it out and let it drop down to the boat, slowing the drop by braking the cord as it ran through my hands. Ranger Advice, readers. Wear gloves or wrap your hands with rags during this operation. Nylon parachute cord burns like a hot iron when it whips through your grasp. After each piece of gear was safely down I let go of one end of the cord and if I pulled the other end slowly and carefully, got the rope back without scrambling down and back up. With everything stowed in Shermona, I was on the river by 0900. Three hours from wake up to cast off seemed to be the story for the whole trip. Once more I wished for a companion to share the duties.
At 1130 I dug in the food bucket for lunch. There was one ziplock bag of homemade trail mix for each noon meal. It consisted of 16 almonds, 4 dried apricots, and ¼ cup raisins. Of course I craved more fat and protein. The large summer sausage that had waited frozen in the deep freeze since Christmas had stayed cold in Mrs. RRR's careful wrapping of old newspapers and plastic grocery sacks. By 1530 (3:30 PM to non Rangers) I had reached Glendale Access, a public boat ramp and camping area. The area had flooded earlier and was still swampy, I was greeted by a cloud of determined gnats and mosquitoes. The DEET helped, but I put my experience of night One to use and dug out my long sleeved canvas shirt. From then on, I put it on before landing at night and took it off after pushing off in the morning.
As Glendale Access looked easy to find on the map, I called Mrs. RRR on the cell phone hoping she could drive over and join me for supper. Fortunately she wasn't home yet, because when I walked up to the bridge you can see in the background of today's picture, I saw a road closed sign which would have caused her a very difficult detour. I was disgruntled, but made myself a big supper. 4 Cheese instant potatoes with pieces of summer sausage simmered in the water before the taters were stirred in. I was very fatigued after and continued my trip routine of wiggling into the tent and falling asleep, only to wake up later and gradually get myself into the blanket bag as the night grew cooler. You can observe from the picture, that I tried solving the problem of not touching the tent walls by rigging my REI tarp over the tent as a fly. Later I discovered a simpler way.
It was the end of Day Two.

Grappling With Destiny

The RRR and Mrs. RRR are in Dallas. Someone loves this city. Perhaps they will comment on this blog. But I didn't start this posting to express my obvious disgust with the Hollywood of the South. First I wish to say that Midkid has had her surgery and came through it stunningly well. The growth removed seems benign, tests are in progress but the pathologist seems 99% certain. My daughter is brave and strong. Her husband is wonderful and supporting. The granddaughters are beautiful, loving, and intelligent. These things are all good.

Meantime I did the last minute shopping for the Big River Trip. I needed an ultralight tarp. So Son In Law and I went to REI, the yuppie equivalent of Campmor.com. REI is known for $70 tarps. And there among them was a Chinese import that looked like exactly what I wanted for a whopping $3.50. I bought it on the spot. That left one more thing I needed... a grappling hook. They were originally used by pirates to snag the railings of ships they had caught to pull them together. The old wooden ship navy used them for the same thing. These days SWAT teams have them to toss on the roofs of buildings to ascend the walls. An investigation of Ebay showed the police type for a whopping $20 plus shipping and they were way too small... about 4" across (10 cm.). My Son In Law came up with a brilliant idea.

He purchased a couple pieces of rebar... concrete reinforcing rod a foot long (30 cm.) and 3/8" in diameter (about 10mm). We took them down to the end of his driveway at the apartment and bent them to shape using the the cast iron sewer grate for a vice and the handle of an adjustable wrench for a bending too. Naturally, it took two more trips to the hardware store but eventually with the help of both of our creativity, two 3/8" cable saddle clamps, and a 3/8" 8" long eye bolt, we completed it. Now I have a really for cool grappling hook which is the size I wanted for only about $7.

Now to answer everyone's burning question... what do I need with a grappling hook? It's because I'm floating down the river alone. I don't have a strong partner to hold the boat in one place while I tie off to the bank or stop when a hazard appears suddenly. The grappling hook will go on the end of the bow anchor chain. When I need to stop, I'll toss it into the woods on the bank of the river. It will catch on a limb, branch or tree trunk and I will come to a stop. When the trip is finished, I'll report how well it worked.