The Throwback Series: The One With No Tent, Part 1

I thought I'd start off The Throwback Series with one of our most memorable backpacking trips from last summer. It was a Friday and I had the day off work (thank you for comp time) and Jordan took a few hours off, ending his work day mid-morning. So I packed up Pebble (our trusty silver Subaru, or Subie as we like to call her), picked him up, and we headed to Red Lodge, MT (a quaint little mountain town about an hour from us that we try to escape to as often as possible).

The plan was to start at Lake Fork Trailhead and hike 7 miles to September Morn Lake, where we'd stay the night. On our way up we made a pit stop at Lost Lake (5 miles in) for a snack break, then continued on our journey. A little while after Lost Lake we ran into a friend from church who was on his way back from Keyser Brown Lake (also 7 miles from the trailhead). When we told him of our plans to spend the night at September Morn, he warned us that there was a group of about 15 workers who were doing trail repair near the lake. Since the whole point of this trip was for the two of us to get away and enjoy some peace and quiet in nature, we decided to change our plans and check out Keyser Brown Lake instead.

It started raining on and off on our way, and after a little while we made it to Keyser Brown Lake. We were the only ones around (jackpot!) so we began searching for that perfect camping spot for the night.

There was a break in the rain so Jordan started setting up the tent. I heard him go "uhhhhh..." so I looked over to discover that we didn't have the rain fly. (Back story: our 2-person tent that we normally take backpacking had a broken pole so we were forced to bring our heavy 4-person tent).

Our options now were to: 1. Head back and call it a day, 2. Put a small blanket over the tent to act as the rain fly, or 3. Fashion some sort of sleeping chamber out of sticks and use the tent like a tarp. While my suggestion was to eat dinner and then hike back out as it was only 4pm, Jordan of course wanted to try option #3, so he began looking for sticks and eventually came up with the structure shown below.

After some arguing (I did NOT feel comfortable with this sleeping arrangement, especially with the uncertain weather we had been experiencing all day), Jordan started a fire so he could make dinner (clearly he knows the way to my heart - FOOD). Since we were only spending one night, he had packed in enough food for us to eat like Kings. First up was a stew made of venison steaks, sweet potatoes, onions, carrots, celery, and spices - the works.

We enjoyed our dinner and for the rest of the evening it stormed on and off (thunder, lightning, rain, hail) so we ended up just laying in our "tent" and reading for a while. Around 9pm Jordan looks over at me and says, "Well should we head back?", to which I rolled my eyes since that is exactly what I had said FIVE HOURS EARLIER when we first discovered our tent fiasco and it was now pitch black and hailing...

When the weather calmed down a little, Jordan went out and got the fire going again so he could make our second supper of sausages and pretzel buns. It started pouring again while they were cooking so we stood under some trees for a bit of shelter while we waited. Once they were ready, we enjoyed them under the trees while getting drenched from the rain before heading to bed to try and get some sleep (all the while feeling like exposed bear bait with sausage smelling fingers...)

To be continued...