Best Camping Trip. Ever.

Hot on the heels of my last post, I remember one of the best camping trips ever. Even better than that time when we thought it was a good idea to take a keg camping with us. It was a good idea. But unfortunately we under-estimated how much was in a keg and had to drive back into civilization for more beer the next night. Next time, we'll take two...

Back when I was young and reckless. Yesterday. I went camping with two of my friends. I was driving home last night and the radio was having a tribute to Pearl Jam and it reminded me of our camping trip. I feel like I need to apologize because I said I hated Pearl Jam at the beginning and my friend (who we will call Schmook) was only allowed to play the CD once a day. Pretty sure I said that without even listening to it - which quite honestly doesn't sound like me, I would never be that contrary, maybe I am thinking of my other friend who we'll call, Schmiv. Schmiv, you should probably apologize.

Some of the highlights - the most awful damper* ever cooked on sticks that were too flimsy to work. But I admire our thought process: find sticks, use pocket knife to strip off bark, end up with twig instead of stick. Wrap damper around stick, hold over fire, watch stick bend precariously with the weight of the damper. Pick up damper out of the fire. Repeat. Pretty sure our recipe involved flour and water so to make it a little more palatable, we dipped it in hippie chocolate bought at the hippie store in a place called Colville which is where the road ended. Not that we let that bother us.  

Totally recommend taking a tiny Daihatsu off-roading

I know I'm in the middle of the highlights but I do think it's an appropriate time to call out Schmook for her Girl Guide skills or lack thereof (possibly she was only ever a Brownie and never graduated to Girl Guide?) Or was it your Duke of Edinburgh (DofE) certification that was supposed to make us feel comfortable about heading into the wilderness with you? Either way, we could have been eaten by bears that aren't even found in New Zealand and all you would have done is wave your damper twig (minus the damper since that fell into the fire long ago) in an effort to frighten him away.  I would have made a run for the Daihatsu personally and put on some Pearl Jam...think that pretty much qualifies me as a DofE.  Probably time for an apology, Schmook? 

But back to the highlights.  Nothing like just the three of you being in a one man tent while a thunder and lightning storm rages around you, taking turns sleeping on the ground since the air mattress didn't fit three.  Not sure that it fitted two either but we all held our stomachs in, didn't breathe or move and made it work.  Kiwi spirit right there.  We even invented a thing called "hang the torch (flashlight) from the roof of the tent".  Basically it involved hanging the torch from the roof of the tent.  It distracted us from the surrounding flooding and loss of the rain fly which quite frankly wasn't really doing its job. Memory gets bit vague here possibly because this is the part where we ended up in a dodgy pub?  Feel certain that we made friends with all the locals, danced on tables, sheared some sheep - you know, the usual.

Those were the days - Schmook, driving us off into the bush in her Daihatsu, to be potentially killed by freak camping accident, arm out the window, ciggie in hand.  Schmiz stuck in the back seat, stuffed under the camping equipment.  Me looking cool.  Singing along to Jeremy.  Badly.

*Look, I'm including a recipe of Damper like all those successful cooking/Lifestyle blogs. I'm just like them but without the cooking and success. Lots of lifestyle though. Not good lifestyle but lots of it and you know what they say - quantity over quality. Or something similar.

Ingredients
450 grams (3 cups) flour, self-raising
¼ teaspoon salt
180ml (6 fl oz) milk - if the mixture is too dry, add a little more milk
1 teaspoon sugar, caster (sugar, granulated)
80 grams (1/3 cup) butter, chilled
extra flour as needed

Method
Mix the flour, salt and sugar together into a bowl.
Rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips until it looks like fine breadcrumbs.
Add milk slowly and mix to form a soft dough.
Knead lightly on a floured board until smooth. Shape into a round loaf, brush with milk and cut a cross in the top surface of the dough.

. . . For campfire cooking
Grease the camp oven (Dutch oven) and dust with flour. Add bread dough and cover.
Place in your campfire, cover with hot ashes and coals and bake for about 30 minutes.

Note: this is not how we did it. I blame the others for (a) not having a Dutch oven and (b) not bringing the Dutch oven that we didn't have with us. We used more of a Kiwi oven...it's a little less sophisticated.

This is what successful damper looks like.  They probably cheated and cooked it in an oven.  Fake campers...