Took a turn off forest service road 2730 this time. They aren't marked so it's hard to say for sure. I still had some of my hiking gear packed and I didn't have time to plan a trip so I jumped in the Jeep and decided to explore some of the roads I saw up by Tunnel Creek.

The weather was warm so I thought I'd bring my lap top and try and get some programming done. It's such a luxury to work undisturbed and focus on a complex algorithym, but in the woods. I'd never done it before. I'd have to see how it went.

2730 had been troughed like other roads in the area. I guess the forest service wasn't intending to maintain them. It's a bit of a gamble because the soft cliffs are constantly dropping rocks across the road. I'd hate to be up here and have the road blocked off by a land slide. It's not the getting stuck that bothers me, it's the getting my vehicle out afterwards. I'd brought a shovel, but some of the roads had huge boulders that would take heavy equipment to move and you know if you had a vehicle stuck up here, they'd charge a fortune to reopen a road or rescue a vehicle. The Jeep is almost scrap metal and hardly worth saving but I doubt if the forest service would look to kindly on abandoning a vehicle up here which would be unthinkable in this beautiful wilderness.

Just as a note there was a sign on the way up "4'wheel drive rescue" so it looks like some of the locals make a few extra dollars rescuing vehicles in the back country. I can see the dollar signs now, and with the rock quarry at the entrance to the park and getting all the forest service road contracts. I would imagine they can get anybody out, boulders and all, but it goes without saying you pay what they ask.

There wasn't any place to pull over on forest service road 2730, or any camp sites It followed a steep incline. I figure I was at about 3000 feet and I took what looked like an abandoned road grown over with trees and brush. It was so tight, it branches kept pushing the folding side mirrors back on the Jeep (good design Chrysler). I didn't want to have to back down this road, so I regularly parked the Jeep and walked ahead to see if Bub and I could keep going. A couple of miles in there was a clearing which had obviously been a hunters camp site dotted with fire pits and littered with cartridges and shot gun shells. Since this was two weeks before hunting season I thought I'd take advantage of the seclusion and camp there.

I set up a wind break for the Pocket Stove and made coffee and dinner. This trip I brought a measuring device so I could calibrate how much fuel I used more precisely. I've yet to find the perfect squeeze bottle for pouring fuel into the Pocket Stove, but this works for camping. It has a flip top lid for squirting the liquid when the bottle is squeezed. I don't trust the plastic yet, as it appears it will become brittle over time. However for backpacking, I would take an extra lid, that seals, and use the flip top lid only when filling the stove. We'll have to discuss containers a little more thoroughly later, but you don't want fuel spilling in your backpack when you go hiking. For camping it's not a problem..

The bottle I was using was clear and held two ounces of fuel. It allowed for easy pouring of half ounce quantities by squirting 1/4 of the bottle's contents into the Pocket Stove. Since I had field tested this amount previously, with a scale, in my back yard, I knew 1/2 ounce was enough to make coffee with and heat up some food.

I poured an estimated two cups of water into one part of the aluminum Peak Stove container I was using and opened a can of Ravioli to pour into the other. The Pocket Stove didn't light on the first try with a small dribble of alcohol fuel lit beneath the stove. Perplexing? It was a bit cooler than on previous trips. I wondered if this might be the reason. I'll have to wait till winter to see if it's harder to light alcohol fuel on a cold day.

The Pocket Stove didn't light on the first try with a small dribble of alcohol fuel lit beneath the stove. Perplexing? It was a bit cooler than on previous trips. I wondered if this might be the reason. I'll have to wait till winter to see if it's harder to light alcohol fuel on a cold day.

The stove lit with the second dribble. The water boiled quickly. I pulled the water off and put the Ravioli on. The flame lasted long enough to heat the Ravioli but not enough to boil the tomato sauce it was in. I put another half ounce of fuel into the stove and heated the Ravioli to boiling. It wasn't necessary, but somehow warm ravioli wasn't appealing and steaming hot, it hit the spot.

Bub shared some of the Raviolit with me, the meat part. She hesitated at first but then, when she discovered that the white flour shell had meat in the center, she was all for it. Probably not the best food in the World for a dog, but since we were camping I brought here fancy canned dog food.

I don't know if you know this, but some people recommend you change your cloths, before going to bed in bear country, after cooking a meal. I don't suppose a bear would be as picky about the Ravioli as Bub, but it figures: bears have big noses like dogs, and they can probably smell a gnat's breath a mile away, or something, so if a camper gets the aroma of food on his or her cloths, they probably smell like dinner. But it's just not practical to change your clothes, especially if it's cold and your tired. Instead I try my best to stay up wind of any cooking and make sure I don't spill something on my cloths that might attract a bear. It's something to think about while your up here, so I just thought I'd pass it along.

I set up the tent and finally coaxed Bub in after I'd been dousing myself with tea tree oil as mosquito repellent. Dogs hate that. A couple of hours before daylight some rascals started going through the bushes next to the tent, probably raccoons. Couldn't get back to sleep so got up and made coffee.

The squeeze bottle made it easy to add fuel to the Pocket Stove in the dark. There wasn't even a moon out so it was completely dark. I also used the squeeze bottle to pour the dribble for lighting. Unfortunately there was no way to see how much I was pouring so I wasted some fuel.

I gotta say the stars were magnificent. It always amazes me to think we're looking up at the same panorama our ancestors looked up at and you got to wonder what they were thinking when they we're looking up at the same stars we see.

Breakfast on the Pocket Stove was instant mush and I thought I'd try and make an omelet this time. I boiled the water for the oatmeal and then I changed the wind break so it would hold the aluminum pan I was using one and a half inches above the Pocket Stove. I went ahead and poured a full ounce into the Pocket Stove and cooked the eggs, cheese and milk. No onions or mushrooms since dogs can't eat those. It worked and both Bub and I had a feast on a huge omelet. Now we need to figure out a way to make toast.

I ran into a problem refilling the squeeze bottle from my main fuel bottle. It spilled. I didn't bring a funnel so it dribbled all over the place. I tried making a funnel out of paper but it flopped over a soon as the alcohol weakened the paper fibre. What a waste of fuel. I pulled the ravioli can out of the garbage sack and washed it. I used the main fuel bottle to refill the Pocket Stove and dried the ravioli can over the flame. It felt unnatural to not know exactly how much fuel I was putting into the stove. Then I bent a pour spout into the ravioli can and used it to refill the squeeze bottle. It worked, but in the future I think I'll bring a funnel. Need something better, though, if anybody has some ideas?

After breakfast Bub and I walked back out the abandoned road we were on and up another road I saw on the way up. It too was over grown for the first few yards, but once you got past that it was clear and looked passable, even though it was carved out of the side of a mountain. About a mile up there was a wash out. There was still enough room for the Jeep to get across, although it was tight, and I didn't like the idea of the cliff, or rather the steep hill with loose rock if we should happen to get a wheel into it. We walked up further and at the end of the road was a camp site. Someone had set up a fire pit recently, probably over labor day week end, although I didn't see any evidence of anybody driving up here, especially with the wash out.

The camp site was too beautiful to pass up. Probably built by loggers originally, as the surrounding forest had been replanted, and this might have been where they parked the loader. It was carved out of the steep side of a hill and it was the only level place outside of the road. The camp site was secluded and looked like a great place to park the Jeep and spend a couple of days on the computer. Bub and I hiked back and got the Jeep. I decided I'd risk driving over the wash out since I had walked up before and had a chance to stomp around and make sure it was stable enough to hold a vehicle. It was.

It's amazing amazing how different the vegetation is up here from what was at Tunnel Creek which is only a few miles away, as the crow flies, on the same side of the Olympics. I'll bet some people describe Tunnel Creek as one of the most beautiful places in the World, with all the green and moss hanging off the trees. A real rain forest. Up here there was very little vegetation on the ground and lichen covers all the tree branches and trunks. The area had been logged thirty or forty years ago, so maybe that was it.

I had a job clearing brush and setting chokes once, working for a logging contractor. With the macho bravado and all, we couldn't work fast enough to pull out trees and do our job making money for the logging companies. We got paid the same each hour no matter how fast we worked, yet there was that bravado, that competition to work ourselves into the ground. No had time to admired the beauty while they worked. They just competed to work harder, be tougher, and do more than the next guy. Now, sitting up here, looking at all this National Forest I think that a professional logger must have logged hundreds if not thousands of acres of land in his life time. Yet looking at some of the old growth in Tunnel Creek and some of the new growth up here I have to ask myself why would anyone consume goods from more than an acre of land in their life time. Imagine if we had to do all our work by hand, cut our own trees, make our own paper, dig our own wells, how much healthier would our population be, and how we could build and create with only the wood from an acre and be thoroughly happy. A person could spend twenty years crafting something out of just one tree, if it was well planned in detail. Instead we rush around, to make money, pay off credit, support government and even our mental habits are rushed by media, computers, and work, and there's no time to just live anymore and do the things that really matter. All for the love, the chase of money and consumption. People have no way to measure the raw material that goes into their consumption. It seems we could do so much more with so much less.

For the next couple of days I worked on the computer and I used four ounces of fuel a day for cooking. A third of that was just for coffee where I used quarter ounce allotments to boil the water. Since I was using an old Peak Stove container, where part of it can be used as a lid, that made it easier to boil the water. I used half an ounce of fuel at breakfast, half an ounce for lunch with noodles, and a full ounce for dinner cooking rice one night and canned soup the other.

On the third night I made macaroni and cheese. It took four ounces of fuel. You see the Pocket Stove holds two ounces of fuel. If you light it, the alcohol has a tendency to expand and burn as quickly as it can. Two ounces will burn in fifteen minutes in the Pocket Stove. If you pour those same two ounces in at half ounce increments, you will have a total burn time of twenty eight minutes for the same two ounces of fuel. But since Macaroni and cheese instructions say boil eight minutes I thought I was safe.

To begin with I set up wind break to hold the pot three inches above the Pocket Stove flame. Optimal seems to be one and a half inches. Instructions on the noodle box say to bring six cups of water to a rapid boil. I only use five in the Peak Stove container, which is fine and allows enough room to add the macaroni later. It took a full ten minutes to get the water to a rapid boil. That wasn't long enough to boil the noodles so I had to refill the Pocket Stove after it burned down and bring the water up to a boil again. Four ounces is too much fuel to use when backpacking, but since I was camping, it's acceptable. So I wouldn't recommend macaroni and cheese for backpacking.

Another treat I decided to try this time was biscuits. When I was a kid we cooked bicuit mix on a stick over a camp fire and it worked great. Since you can't always have a campfire I was thinking of testing the same thing over the Pocket Stove. However for this trip I brought a package of rolled biscuits, you know the kind you hit on the side of the counter and the Pillsbury Doughboy pops out. I cooked them on a small cast iron skillet it and used two ounces of fuel, a full fill of the Pocket Stove, after I preheated the pan on the engine of my car which I was running to recharge the batter for my computer. Long story, but I didn't want to take a chance of running the car battery down and having to compression start the Jeep uphill from a washout on the side of a cliff. Just a precaution. But still I would imagine a cast iron skillet would probably require another two ounces of fuel to preheat. It would be better to use a lighter frying pan.

Friday came and I hadn't planned on staying through the weekend. This camp site is in a safe location, where I could hear anybody if they came up, but my concern for some of the others is if some rowdies come up in their four wheel drives, drinking and shooting guns I wouldn't want to be around. That 's also why I'd avoid this area during hunting season. I'm sure our hunting community is responsible, but I notice the regulations require hunters to wear 300 square inches of day glow orange so they can be seen by other hunters if they are in the area. The rules didn't say anything about campers in hunting areas during hunting season, but since I didn't, hadn't invested in a day glow vest, I figure I'd avoid being up here in hunting season, which was actually going on during this trip, although it was only for 'high country buck'. I wonder if white tail where the vests if they come up here?

The rest of the year, though, it appears this area is empty. I was up here for four days, two weeks after labor day week end, and I didn't hear a soul. Normally you'd hear a car engine if someone was driving up, or you could hear gun shots if they were in any of the hills around the area. Not to mention it was so quiet at times, you could hear people talking, if they were on the mountain tops across the way, but there was none of that.

This is a unique resource. It's national forest and we all have rights to come up here and go camping or hiking and I'd certainly recommend it. Just bring enough water, a Pocket Stove and any food you'll need and you'll have a great trip.