Screenshot Hey, everyone! I hope everyone is healthy and safe. Today I want to talk about something new that I have added to my camera bag and camping backpack. It's the iPad Mini. I have been looking for something that I could use on the go to edit photos, use for navigation, and of course, consume media. Now, of course, everyone has a phone in their pocket, and they are great but small. Our phones are also doing a lot of things like storing maps and photos, and this really bogs them down and fills them up.  I needed something that could be used for photo editing on the go and something that I could also use for map storage that would not fill up my phone. I have an iPad Pro that is provided by my employer, and it works great for doing all of these things; however, with the attached cover and keyboard, it weighs more than my MacBook Air that I use when I go on trips. I am getting older, and weight in my pack matters, especially with camera gear weighing it down. I have an older iPad (not sure what version it is) that is so old that the operating system can't be upgraded, and it will not run the programs that I want to run on the iPad like Lightroom or Gaia GPS, a mapping program. I needed something new, so Screenshot I decided on the iPad Mini. It is small in form with a 7.9 inch screen. It is also lightweight, maybe twice the weight of my iPhone. I am heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem, so it was the choice for me. There are some Android choices that I could have gone to that were cheaper, but I'm an Apple guy and wanted to stick with what I knew. One of the features I like so much about my work iPad Pro is that it is cellular + Wifi.  This means that almost anywhere I go I will have the internet at my fingertips.  It also means that it has a GPS chip that I can use for maps when I'm camping or off-grid. I also wanted as much storage as I Screenshot could get to store maps, movies, and things like that. I do like watching a good movie while I'm snug as a bug in my hammock. So I opted for the largest storage that is available for the iPad, which is 256 gig of storage. So how will I use this big, bad little iPad?

Let's talk photography first. The iPad Mini will never be my main way of editing photographs. That will always be my 27" iMac at home. But for those on-the-go "let's edit this one and post to Instagram or Facebook" moments, the iPad Mini will do nicely.  It's small enough that I can carry it easily with any photo bag Screenshot I choose, from my Shimodo backpack that I use for doing landscape photography when I'm hiking to my over-the-shoulder Mountainsmith bag that I use for street photography, the bag I like to call my purse. It will fit in either of these bags. It's perfect for a morning walk around a new town, stopping at a coffee shop, or sitting on a park bench and transferring a photo from my camera using the wifi and doing a quick edit in Lightroom. Sure, I could do this on my phone, but it's much easier on a larger screen. Another advantage to the iPad Mini is that I can use my Apple pencil and make precise edits that would be hard just using my finger. I can also just jot down a note or draw something, that is if I were talented enough to draw. LOL. The iPad Mini is also just the right size to share photographs with people. If you're like me, I have my winners from Lightroom Classic synced with my mobile devices via the Cloud. They are all on my phone and now my iPad Mini. So that's the photography part of the iPad Mini. What about camping and hiking?

Screenshot When camping or hiking, one of the most important things to do is, as the Scouts say, "Be prepared." And one of the most important ways to be prepared for hiking is to have a map. I use Gaia GPS, which is a mapping program that uses all of the known nationally provided maps, and you can layer them to fit your needs. If you're looking for trails, it can find the trails for you. If you're looking for forest service roads, it can find those also. It can also give you all of the topographical areas of a place you're going to. It's a big, powerful program that will allow you to plan and route your trips in advance. The trouble is when you lose the internet or it quits working, unless you download online maps and use some sort of GPS, whether it's an external GPS like a Garmin or the internal one like what is on the iPad Mini cellular version. When you have the GPS and the downloaded maps, then you can see where you are in realtime. I was going to get a WiFi-only version of the Screenshot  iPad Mini that would have been cheaper, but the GPS with Bluetooth capabilities would have been between 100 and 400 dollars depending on what I got, and then I would have two things to worry about - losing it and keeping it charged up with fresh batteries. So I opted for the cellular version that comes with a GPS chip. I have gone ahead and added the iPad Mini to my cellular plan at less than 20 bucks a month for unlimited data, but I could still have used the GPS part of it without activating the cellular portion of the iPad. Like I said before, it is also great for media consumption, so I have some movies, TV shows, and podcasts downloaded to the iPad in case I get bored at the campsite and don't have cellular reception. If I do have cell reception, I can watch regular TV, Netflix, or any other type of media by camp firelight. I can also edit photos while backpacking.

Here are a few specs of the iPad Mini version 5.  The screen is a 7.9-inch retina display with a resolution of over 330 ppl. So it's sharp! You can use the Apple pencil, but only the first version of the pencil. It works great and is cheaper than the newer versions. It is rated at a 10-hour battery life, which is a long time using this without a charge. It can be either WiFi only or WiFi+cellular. With the cellular version, a GPS chip is included. Storage capacity is either 64 gigabytes or 256 gigabytes, nothing in between. It has the A12 Bionic micro-processing chip, so it is very fast and snappy.  

The iPad Mini is sometimes referred to as the iPad Pro Mini because it can do just about anything that the iPad Pro can do.  But because of its size, it's just called the iPad Mini. It's a great little device that I think will enhance my photography and camping experience, and I highly recommend it. So until next week, be creative, explore, and get outside and shoot!

Hey Everyone! Hope everyone is healthy and safe today. Today I want to talk about car camping. First, let's describe what I mean about car camping. There are all kinds of camping. There is backpacking where you carry all of your possessions on your back into the woods to a campsite. There is RV camping where you either drive or pull behind your vehicle an RV (Recreation Vehicle) or camper. But today we're going to talk about car camping where you load up the car and the kids, go to a campground, park right beside where you'll be camping, and then set up camp. Now, I have been camping for almost 40 years, and if you count Boy Scouts even longer. But most recently, since I turned 50, I have been camping quite a lot. I do all of the camping mentioned above, but I probably look down my nose at car camping the most.  I don't know why. I actually do it the most out of all the other kinds of camping. But I usually say something like, "I was just car camping" when someone asks me about camping. Last weekend my son and my travel companion Forrest came with me to the mountains of North Carolina, and we did some car camping.  And it was great! We camped at a National Park Service campground. It's an older campground with old-growth trees and large campsites, over 100 campsites at this location even though it doesn't seem like it. This weekend the campground was full. This was my first trip to this campground, so I don't know if it's full like this all of the time or if it is because of the COVID virus and everyone just wants to get out of the house. We camped very simply. My son and Forrest put up a tent to sleep in, and I slept in the back of my truck in the bed that I had made in it. This was my maiden voyage in the truck, and it went okay.  I slept well, but getting in and out was a pain. We cooked on an almost 40-year-old camp stove that we use for car camping. We cooked steaks and veggies, and we made fresh ground coffee with a French press we brought. The temps were cool and the weather was great. While I was sitting in my camp chair looking around at the campground, I got a great feeling. I could see all of the campfires going with people huddled around enjoying each other's company, children playing, and people cooking. It was a beautiful sight to see all of these people from all walks of life, rich to poor, all races young and old, and everyone was enjoying themselves and being very polite while doing it. What a contrast it was to the nightly news of riots in the streets, politicians calling each other names, and of course all of the death from the COVID virus. It was how life is supposed to be, everyone getting along.

Soon it was time for bed. And as old men do, I had to get up in the middle of the night to relieve myself.  While I was by that tree I looked up and saw all of the stars. There were thousands of them! I have taken photos of the night sky before, but tonight it was chilly and I wanted to get back into that warm bed in my truck. So I got in and went back to sleep.  Now, people that know me know that I am a morning person and a very early riser. So about 4:30-ish I got up and as quietly as I could made some coffee on the camp stove.  It was still dark and I didn't want to make any noises, because dogs go crazy when they hear noises and I didn't want to wake all of the dogs in the campground. I got my coffee without much commotion and noise and also got my sleeping bag and sat in my camp chair and watched all of the stars. As I sat there and as the night slowly turned into day, the stars slowly went away. The weaker ones first, and then finally the strong ones just went away when enough light was in the sky. I have to say, this is the first time I have ever looked at the stars that way and it was fantastic, maybe the best part of the trip.

After my son and Forrest got up, we made some breakfast burritos, and they were great. We decided to take an almost 3-mile hike around the lake which was nice, and it was like we were the only ones out there. Forrest had fun exploring new things and smells. When we got back to camp, we packed up everything, cleaned the site, and stacked the wood that we didn't use by the fire pit. Then we departed. This was a fantastic little trip, and I could talk about it for quite some time. The bottom line is, I'm not going to look down my nose at car camping anymore. Although I enjoy the other types of camping, I still enjoy car camping, and I think you will too. So get to your local campground and do some camping. You'll meet some great people and have a great time in nature. So until next week, get outside and make some memories.

Hey everyone! Hope everyone is healthy, safe, and inspired. This week I'm going to talk about something I thought I would never talk about. It's something that I really enjoy and is practical at the same time. Sewing! Yeah, I know, a 50+-year-old man who likes to hike and backpack and do all sorts of camping liking to sew. Well, really it's not too far fetched. I got into sewing to save a few pennies on camping gear by making it myself. So like everything I do, I threw myself into this full on. And now I have my own sewing kit (separate from my wife's), and I love to make things for camping and hiking.  

Some of my first projects were very simple, like making storage bags or stuff sacks to put things in, like sleeping bags, tents, and smaller bags for small loose stuff. I'm an organizational freak and love to have everything separated and in its proper place.  I was surprised at the quality I got and how with just a little training (YouTube) I got quite good. I even made Christmas gifts for all of my family by making toiletry bags or cosmetic bags for everyone in the family. They were all customized for each person with different colors and patterns. They had waterproof zippers and really turned out well. Everyone was surprised that I had made them myself. I even made some bags for my camera gear also, and everything turned out great.

My first big project was a backpacking tarp made for my hammock setup. It was made out of silnylon and waterproof.  If you have watched any of my videos, it's an orange tarp and it works great! I have been through a few rainstorms in it, and it's held up great. I even made doors for it so when it rains the mist doesn't waft in. The sewing on the first big item did have some mistakes. But it has been a good functional tarp for a few years, and my son has been using it lately.

My next big project was an Under Quilt for my hammock. An under quilt provides insulation underneath the hammock to keep you from getting a cold butt.  The wind or air that goes under a hammock can pull all of the heat off of your body and make you cold. Even in summer.  So I made an adjustable underquilt with insulation inside and all of the attachments to hook it to the hammock. It's good for about 50 degrees. I wouldn't go much colder than that without getting a bigger underquilt. This one works great and is the underquilt that I use in the summer.

Making a hammock and a separate bug net was my next project. The hammock was simple enough to make, and my sewing had gotten much better.  The bug net, which is actually a big sock that encases the hammock to keep the bugs out, wasn't too bad either. This particular hammock is the one my son uses now with the bug net, and it keeps the bugs away and works great. There are also other parts of the hammock that are not the cloth part that have to be made too, like tree straps, the ridgeline, and a storage bag. Tree straps are the straps that go around the tree and should be webbing that is at least an inch wide so as not to harm the tree that you are anchored to.  Whoopie slings are adjustable cord made out of kevlar and are very strong. They hook to the hammock and to the tree straps to hold the hammock in place. And then there is the ridgeline, which goes from one end of the hammock to the other to keep the hammock in a good "hang" if you will no matter what the distance is between the trees. I also make the bag that all of these things fit into and then can also be used as an organizer to put your phone, wallet, water, and what not on the ridgeline. I make all of these items.

My biggest and toughest project was making a hammock with a zippered bug net that could be zipped off and on. It took me some time to make it, but what was neat was I could customize it to fit my needs. I call this hammock the red canoe because it looks like one when hanging alone. It works great, and I can zip the bug net on or off as needed. It has clips to help keep an underquilt in place and can be staked out for more comfort if needed.  This is my personal hammock, and I do have plans for making another one with some more modifications. I have since made a winter tarp with built-in doors for privacy and to keep the wind out. I used it last weekend for the first time, and it was great.

All of these projects would not have been possible without the help of YouTube and Ripstop by the Roll, a company out of Durham, North Carolina, where I get my materials for all of the projects, from the fabric, cordage, and accessories. They are a great company and have lots of projects you can do, and they even make kits with all of the materials that you need for a very good price. Now with the time I put in and the cost of the materials, I could probably get a hammock cheaper, but I don't think I could get one that is customized to me.  And it's just fun and a good feeling seeing the finished product in use.  While camping the other weekend, someone asked me where I got my hammock setup.  I just looked and smiled and said, "I made it."

Well, that's about it for this week.  Remember, keep shooting and get outside and enjoy life!