‘Our last little puppy went off to her new home yesterday. Farewell little Dot, now sporting the very grown-up name of “Stella” (melded from the names of her devoted Grandparents😀). The house is a little less bouncy and joyous this morning and Honey doesn’t quite know what to do with herself. Stella, however, has scored […]
If you have made a ‘faux’ pack raft (as here and here) as I have you will have had the same problem with the paddle. The cheap (Intex) rafts come with a set of oars which need to be converted into a double bladed paddle (which will fit in a canoe drum!) I tried several
The photo of me standing in the snow in front of the archway in the last post reminded me that back on 10th August 2005 we had this amazing dump of snow around here – South Gippsland and Southern Victoria in general. Much more snow and lower down than we ‘normally get – whatever that
Which I built in a morning (for $27) over thirty years ago is no more. Back on 08/06/2014 I posted this about it: Invisible worlds: the archway: Straight outside our front door we have this archway: you’ve probably seen it before in family photos, as it makes an interesting backdrop. Around here we have often
Things just keep getting better and better. I was impressed by the CRKT PDK knife but I am even more impressed by this 10.4 gram little beauty. I confess I may have a titanium fetish, and yes, I do think you could dress a sambar deer with one. I have used the CRKT on one
Opinel make some pretty unique knives. I guess I came to the party a bit late on this one, but I have two of them in my hand right now and they are magnificent! First I bought the Opinel No 6: because a reader (Tim) recommended it (in this post), as follows: ‘Opinel #6 has
A friend of mine coined the phrase ‘APC’ being a play on words for a major patent medicine of the 50s and 60s. Instead of the three chemicals which were its constituents (Aspirin, Phenacetin and Codeine – you just can’t get good pain relief cheaply any more!), her expression stood for ‘Armpits and Crotch’. A
This is my 1300th post here at the Ultralight Hiker! That’s probably about a million and a half words (more than a dozen novels worth!) and over 25,000 photos. Quite an achievement in four years since May 2015 when I began this blog. It has been 200 posts since the 1100th post in May 2018
An idea whose time is right: A Portable Bidet As you can see these guys have raised a million bucks on an ‘ask’ of $36K. Not bad. Gives some idea of the demand for these things – yet they were not focusing primarily on hikers. However their device weighs only .5lb (225 grams?) lasts 3
(or ‘journey cakes‘ as they once were known) also fried scones and maybe ‘bannock’ (from the Latin, ‘panis’ or ‘bread) if you hailed from Scotland. You can see that their (European) origin is quite ancient. They were once a basic food item. Folks took little else into the bush (by way of food) except for
