Let's Pretend....a Learning Experience

I've been asked to help my sister with a couple of days of hanging out with my 8 year old nephew, Logan now that he's off school. When she asked me if I'd babysit I asked her if she thought he could carry a canoe and we'd go camping. I was joking. He's old enough to accompany LT and me on a trip, but that's not in the cards. So I thought he and I would have a "pretend" camping day. 

Our map

This pretend trip is completely on dry land. We'll drive to a park near my place and go for a short hike to a place where we can set up a campsite just for the day. It's a park meant for picnics, it has lots of picnic tables with barbecues with a river running along it. We won't have a fire, but we'll eat lunch. The menu is lasagna with apple pie for dessert.

I'll be printing out a map for him to follow, it's the one at the left.

When LT bought me my Hennessy hammock for Christmas they sent him a Cub hammock. It's meant for kids, up to 5'8", 120 pounds. We'll set up both hammocks and pretend we're going to sleep over and maybe just take a nap after lunch. 

Even though I don't need most of my gear, I'm going to bring it to show him how it works. It may be many years before he goes off on a backcountry canoe trip, but hopefully I'll pique his curiosity enough that when the opportunity comes for him, he jumps on it instead of like me, taking over 50 years to get to that place.

I've packed my stove (which I'll use to make lunch), my water filtration system, my hammock, sleeping bag, pillow, mattress. I have my chair, plus the tripod chair I had before. I picked him up his mess kit at LeBaron the other day:

Bowl, cup and KFS

The Day of the Adventure:
We had gorgeous weather. I parked my car about 1.5 kilometers from our camping spot and we hiked on the paths to the site I had chosen each of us carrying our packs.

Logan had a backpack that we put his camping hammock into as well as his mess kit. I had my usual large pack with a lot of what I usually carry.

We found our spot and set up camp, including both hammocks.

Logan is already in his hammock

 It was nice to have a picnic table for a change to keep stuff off the ground.

We lay in the hammocks and chatted to each other. We listened for birds. He recently did a school project on birds and has taken an interest in the large variety of birds he gets in his backyard at home.

Using my stove to make lunch

I brought my stove and my water filtration system. I carried 2 Nalgene litre bottles with water. I showed him how I filter water using my tap water from home. 

For lunch I brought dehydrated lasagna. For dessert I had my new apple pie recipe. I had also brought some cheese strings for the lasagna. He wasn't as eager of a fan of the dried food as LT. Maybe it has something to do with not having worked a bit harder for it without paddling. And Logan doesn't do any of his own cooking yet.

Less than eager about lunch

We climbed back into the hammocks for a short break before packing up and walking back to the car. It was getting pretty hot and we ended the day stopping by my local outdoor pool (which was empty because the Ontario kids were still in school) where Logan got to have the diving board all to himself. I know the water was fresh as I had seen the truck filling the pool up 3 days earlier. All in all, it was a great day!