chuck.latournous.com » Outdoors

Autumn: It’s not just the ‘season-before-winter’ anymore

Chuck La Tournous — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:23:51 +0000

Photograph by the author

I hated fall when I was younger. Not because there was anything wrong with the season itself, but because I just couldn’t get past the fact that fall meant that winter was just around the corner.

Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate fall for what it is, not just for what it means is coming next. It’s become my favorite season of the year. The temperature is brisk, the air clean and full of wonderful aromas and the colors are of course spectacular.

Oh, and the fact that there are no bugs doesn’t hurt either.

Like ‘Survivorman’ but with better food

Chuck La Tournous — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:17:04 +0000

Alex and I went to BSA’s Florida Sea Base — a high adventure camp in the Florida Keys. We and our crew (five scouts and three adults in total) took the “Out Island Adventure,” where we paddled five-and-a-half miles into the ocean to reach Big Munson Island, a deserted isle with no electricity, no cell phones and no fresh water. We lived there for five days, cooking our own food, kayaking, fishing, snorkeling and basically just surviving. It was an incredible experience. We dined on fish we caught and cooked ourselves, swam with sharks at night and snorkeled in crystal clear water surrounded by thousands of fish. Here’s a link to our troop’s photo gallery where you can see some of what we did. (We’ve got film from our underwater cameras out for processing as I write this.)

Our bedroom for the week. Talk about a room with a view!

By the end of the week, we were exhausted, smelly and eager for a drink of water that wasn’t hot. But one of my first thoughts on stepping back onto the dock at our base camp was that I hope James wants to do this when he’s old enough so I can go back.

Singing (and hiking) in the rain

Chuck La Tournous — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:01:17 +0000

The boys and I went on a hike to Point Mountain, a beautiful mix of trails, forest, streams–and of course, mountain–very close to our home. We had gone there once before, but this time, we went with James’ Scout patrol. It turned out to be a rainy hike, but we had fun nonetheless. I did a write-up on it for my TrailCamper.com site. You can read more about it there, but it was great to see that the rain couldn’t dampen our enthusiasm (although I suppose it did cut it a little short.)

Even in a downpour, the view from the top was beautiful. In fact, seeing clouds drift by below us was something special we never would have seen if we had postponed our hike for a sunnier day.