Since this got bumped back up, I figured I'd post pictures of last weekend's overnighter at Caledon State Park here. I shared these with the Facebook group, as well, so I apologize for any déjà vu!
Caledon is in northern Virginia, on the southern bank of the Potomac River. It has a hike-in/paddle-in primitive campground, which consists of 6 sand tentpads. Each of these have a fire ring, lantern pole, and a picnic table, and there is a porto-John, but no potable water. Everything has to be packed in and packed out. It makes for a good "Ranger lite"-type camping trip, because it requires hiking in with gear, but the pressure of selecting an appropriate campsite isn't there and the rangers usually cruise by in the evening to check on everyone.
It's about a 3 mile hike from the parking lot to the campground. We took the Hampstead Road trail up the the Jones Pond loop. The trails are gravel and well marked, so there's not much of a chance of getting lost. Gravel can be rough on turnshoes, though.
4 adults and two children ended up coming, but only two of us went in kit with primitive gear. I wore my Breelander kit with the addition of some thigh-high leather gaiters. I wore my bedroll in the way
Greg described. Since the low overnight was forecast to be 28 degrees F, I added a second half-blanket to one I usually carry in my bedroll, so with the half-blanket I use as a cloak, I had two wool blankets. The portmanteau served as a pantry. I'd like to get a bean boiler to carry in it, but since Bob over at Backwoods Tin hasn't been accepting orders (as far as I can tell) I carried my ceramic cookpot in my market wallet. With cold weather in mind, I used the other side of the market wallet to carry a wool surcote and a modern wool neck gaiter and sweater. I secured the market wallet under my haversack strap and used my rolled-up cloak to pad it a bit. My costrel is still acting up, so I used a gourd canteen.
My friend uses Viking garb (or Dwarven, if you prefer) - a wool kappenrock-style jacket based on the Hedeby find, linen Russ pants from
Linengarb.com, wool leg wraps and turnshoes. On the hike in, he rolled up most of his gear in his tapestry/groundcloth or carried it in a canvas drawstring backpack.
Caledon has a lot of old growth deciduous forest, which is very pretty this time of year.
The wind off the river was fierce, so we picked the tent pad farthest from the water. There were some shrubs and small trees between the pad and the river, which formed a decent barrier. The sand that makes up the tent pad will suck the heat right out of you while you sleep, so we piled up a bedding of pine needles before setting up our tarp.
For warmth, the two of us shared a tarp shelter. We weren't able to set it as taut as I would have liked because we had to run a line between trees on either side of the 20' pad to tie the peak off to. I used my 8'x8' tarp to cover the pine needles, and his 12'x10' tarp made the shelter.
There was enough room inside for two bedrolls, and we stored our gear up by our heads. The portmanteau made a quite reasonable pillow!
Cooking over embers is a little difficult in a fire ring with a grill, because it's hard to get the pot in the embers while keeping it upwind of the fire. The wind was blowing from the side the grate was on. I was able to keep most of the ashes out of my food by positioning the pot off to the side, but it never really came up to a boil. Fortunately, I don't really mind slightly crunchy lentils.
I cooked lentils in rehydrated pocket soup (Jas Townsend has a
video about making it). It won't win any beauty contests, but with a little salt it was quite tasty.
I was worried about the cold, but between all the layers I brought and the tarp setup, I actually found it to be quite tolerable. I think worrying about getting too cold kept me up more than the actual cold. My friend said e could have used one more layer of wool, though - his undertunic was cotton and he only had one (very nice, but still just one) wool blanket.
My friend's pack setup gave him trouble on the way in, so we built a Roycroft pack frame at camp. The branches we used were probably a bit thicker than they needed to be, but he chose to trade carrying a bit of extra weight for peace of mind that they wouldn't break.
The pack frame held up well on the hike out, and he's planning to improve it a bit by carving notches to seat the wood together before lashing. The head park ranger asked us what we were doing on the way out, but in a curious way, not a confrontational way. She has friends who reenact and LARP, evidently, so she knew enough to ask if what period our gear was from.
Overall, I think it was a very successful trip. I'm happy with my current gear set-up, and my friend has some ideas for some refinements on his kit. The cold wasn't as bad as I was afraid it would be, but I'll still probably aim for warmer weather for my next adventure. I definitely need to do some more walking in turnshoes - my feet took a little more of a beating than I'd like, especially if I want to start doing longer treks (no blood blisters this time, though!) I also need to practice breaking down wood with a tomahawk more.
We're already talking about doing a more dispersed-camping style trip up to the mountains, maybe in the summer, so I'll try to post updates on how that planning is going on the forum!