Greatest memory of the outdoorz...

gijase

I remember going on a camp out with my dad...it was a fathers and sons camp out...Well we got there I was put in charge of the fire...So I made a nice bonfire...and was told near the end of the night...they didnt want to take any wood that they brought home...So I continued to stoke the fire...I got it so hot...in the center that we were throwing aluminum cans in the center and they were melting away...it was a pure blue and white flame in the middle...it was awesome...

I was 13 at the time...great fun...

hdsqrl

When I was 10, my parents left the corporate life and bought a feed store out in the middle of nowhere, CA. They also bought me a little horse (when I say "little", I don't mean a mini-horse or a pony, just a shorter-than-average actual horse, heh. I think he stood 14.2 hands.) We only lived there for a year before my dad was called back into corporate America and we relocated to the Chicago area. But that year! Oh, that year. 10 years old, running around everywhere on my little horse, playing in the Salinas river and panning for tiny fragments of fool's gold, THAT is the stuff childhoods should all be made of.

I was crushed when we had to move. Someday I will own a horse again. Someday.

iplayoutside19

Do we have to pick one?

fishermanbob

I will have to say this weekend was. We had some hiking, canoeing and some fishing. Some awesome memories with my kids. My son reeled in his first catfish, I think it took a half an hour. He was so proud and the picture tells all.

iplayoutside19

There are just too many for me to pick a favorite. This means I have to go with the period in my life that got me hooked on the outdoors, Boy Scouts! Between ages of 13 & 16 I went camping once a month all year round. I don’t think there was any aspect of the outdoors we didn’t do, maybe snow sking. We backpacked, swam, rock climbed, rode Mt bikes, did orienteering courses (remember, GPS wasn’t always available), canoed, kayaked, sail boated, learned to use a knife, learned how to shoot a rifle and shotgun, learned to cook, how to cook over an open fire, how to build a fire to suit specific cooking needs, and how to build a fire without much of anything. Camped in the 100* heat, and the snowy cold, and everything else in between. I probably forgot a few things along the way.

No matter how bad school, sports, or girls were going. I knew that within a month I’d be packing for another adventure with friends from my neighborhood. I didn’t even care about reaching Eagle as long as I got to go camping. I made it to Life before eventually quitting to join Civil Air Patrol.

I went off to college and totally forgot about the outdoors for a while. Partying, girls, work, school work were my hobbies. It wasn’t until I met my wife that I got back into the outdoors. Seems her family did a fair amount of camping. We went on our first camping trip the summer after we got married which reignited all those Boy Scout memories, and ever since then the outdoors has been my primary hobby. This has led to 10 years of camping memories that I have a hard time ranking in any particular order.