Three Days with My Sons

My sons were meeting me in Rhode Island for a weekend camping trip. We planned to meet late afternoon but several delays moved our rendezvous time out a little. We were camping at George Washington Memorial Campground in Rhode Island. The campground was about an hour Northwest of where I was. All photos by Jeremy Ott.

George Washington Memorial Campground

The George Washington Memorial Campground is located in Gloster, RI. This is a remote location offering fishing, hiking, mountain biking trails, and one set of flushed toilets and showers. There are maps with each site marked, but if you are following the signs in the park to the site, you may have trouble finding the site. We were located in site T2, and on any day there were cars turning and searching for their site on our short side street. Some people actually got out and asked what site we had.

They don’t say it on the description of the site, but almost all the toilets are porta-potties conveniently placed and periodically cleaned.

The tenting sites have a wooden platform for setting up your tent on. They are level and help keep down the dirt in the tent. The downside at this time of year is that they are raised 6-8 inches of the ground and may be cooler than the ground itself. This isn’t really a problem for me with my thick mattress and sleeping bag.

It seems that Rt 44 beside the campground is a mecca for motorcyclists. Perhaps there is more activity this time of year with the trees changing. Down the street from the park entrance is a motorcycle bar. At night, sitting around the campfire you can certainly hear load mufflers on the other side of the forest. I never did get loud mufflers. Isn’t the purpose of a muffler to, as they say, muffle the sound? It seems that most of these bikes enhance the muffler sound.

Oct 7

I woke on Friday morning to blue skies and a light breeze. I opened the car door and let in fresh air. I breathed in fresh moist air and watched as small clouds formed in the sky and slowly moved out over the ocean. Outside, I could see moisture condensing in the distance and rising to form more clouds.

I ate breakfast and packed everything in the car. It was so nice at the campsite that I pulled out a book and relaxed in the sun. It was such a contrast from the previous few days.

In the afternoon, I did some preparation for our camping weekend. I have a 5 lb. propane tank that I use with my stove and I had to get it filled. It’s not fun to run out of propane in the middle of a camping trip. I topped up the ice as well and purchased a few other things for the trip.

We all made it to the campsite around 6:30 pm. The campground has a limit of two cars per party. We had three and parked all three at the campsite. No one bothered us about anything.

We had home made pizzas in an ooni pizza oven. We each pulled our own pizza. Getting the pizza stretched out was a challenge but a lot of fun. We over cooked a couple and justified eating them by agreeing that charcoal tables exist to pull impurities out of the body. The worst one got burnt on one corner and we cut it off.

We made a roaring campfire with wood purchased at the local Stop-n-Shot. The wood was oak and was kiln dried making it burn perfectly. When we started running low, we gather old wood from the forest. One piece of wood had the smell of incense. We decided that it was either pine or cedar. This led to a discussion about pine and cedar trees. Are cedar trees pine trees? Yes, camping can be educational. We realized it was past mid-night and that we were going to go hiking in the morning. We wondered if we had been too loud.

Oct 8

We had oatmeal for breakfast with maple syrup. My favorite oatmeal is made with Bob's Red Mill Cut Oats. These oats have more body to them and aren’t mushy like instant oatmeal. They also have a lot more flavor, unless you put too much maple syrup on them.

We headed off around 9:30 am for our morning hike. There are three main hiking trails in the George Washington Memorial Campground Area marked with Blue, Red, and Orange blazes. We chose the Red trail which partially intersects the North South Trail in Rhode Island. This is an easy trail of about a 6 miles. Note, if you include the access roads, there are many additional places to walk / hike in the park.

Back at the campsite, some of were hungry. We found some Dr. Praeger’s Black Bean Veggie Burgers. We also had some Dave’s Killer Buns, lettuce, tomato, onion and mustard. One of us can’t eat flax and all these products had flax. Flax seems to be the new filler.

After lunch we went fishing. I was a little apprehensive because I was chilled at the camp site and there was a breeze. Jeremy brought two small floatation devices with seats and waders for both of us. We used flippers to maneuver our selves around. I was actually quite warm even with my legs in the water. Jason, brought his fishing kayak with multiple poles setup. They showed me how to cast and I seemed to get the hang of if quickly. It wasn’t long after we entered the water that we were catching fish.

It was a little bit of a struggle moving again the wind. We tried to find a calmer place on the lake where there was almost no wind. I caught one Rock Bass and together we caught six different types of fish. We were in the water for a few hours and when I got out my legs didn’t want to function. It was more work moving around than I expected. We didn’t bring anything back for dinner.

We took another trip to stop-n-shop for food and wood.

We had chicken fajitas for dinner (chicken, onions, peppers, and spices) cooked over the fire in an iron skillet. We used flour tortillas. On the side, we made a Spanish rice mix. This was a very welcome and filling meal. We agreed that we should have had it with a Mexican beer instead of what we had on hand.

We were all a little exhausted and doused the fire much earlier than last night.

Oct 9

We had blueberry protein pancakes for breakfast. Yes, with more maple syrup. You can never have too much maple syrup.

They departed around 10 am and the camp site looked empty. We decided we need to make this an annual trip. Where will we find ourselves next year?

I moved my tent onto the platform and reorganize a few things.

I decided to go for a bike ride to explore the various access roads in the park. There are many dirt / gravel roads to investigate. Unfortunately, dirt bikes seem to be allowed to use these same road, so there are spots that are I couldn’t ride with the mountain bike. The gravel was so chewed up that I couldn’t get traction. I spent about 3 hours on the bike exploring and realized I wasn’t going to see all the trails.

Once again, I was off to stop-n-shop to top up supplies and buy firewood. I decided that for dinner I would make soup with the leftover chicken and vegetables in my cooler. I started with onions, peppers and mushrooms in the Dutch oven over the fire. I also add some soup mixed which is mostly lentils and beans with some dried vegetables. I also added stewed tomatoes to give it more liquid. Each site had a fire pit with adjustable grill. I was surprised how I could control the heat by changing the height of the grill and adding or moving the heat source. I had leftover rice and used that as the base for the meal.

I had so much soup that I packaged it in small containers for next week. This is one issue cooking for yourself while camping. You have to store leftovers and you want to buy smaller quantities of food at the grocery store. For example, I sometimes need one carrot, but I have to buy 8 or more sometimes. So you learn to each carrot snacks. There must be a better way without getting into all the dried, prepackaged foods that have a lot of salt.

I also bought too much wood. I was falling asleep in my chair in front of the fire. I wanted to wait for the wood to finish burning and realized that could take a few more hours. I doused the fire with a gallon of water and sent a plume of ash into the air around the campsite.

I went to bed, warmed by a fire, exhausted, full of food.