We finally got our tent and 2nd sleeping back in. We now have all our gear and are ready for our first trip. The tent is a Kelty Gunnisan 3.1 and the new sleeping bag is a Coleman Casper 15 degree. Our other sleeping bag is a Sleumberjack Odyssey 10 degree. We will try these sleeping bags and see how well they do. Most our camping wont be below freezing so we hope these bags will work ok. The Kelty Gunnisan 3.1 tent is AWESOME it is nice and big for two people and gear inside the tent.

The Idea

When I was a young Boy Scout around 14 years old I went to Philmont and hiked the mountains of Cimarron New Mexico. I really didn't like hiking or backpacking as a boy, in fact I hated it, I did enough hiking and backpacking to get the merit badges and that is about it.

Well a couple years ago my son informed me that I was going back to Philmont sometime with him. So last year my son and I decided we are going to start doing some backpacking trips together. I am a life long Scouter, I have been in Scouting for a 35 years now and my son has been in for about 7 years now. Since many Boy Scout troops do not do much backpacking, we had very little real backpacking gear. So at the end of 2008 my son and I started getting all the gear we need to begin backpacking. We are not starting off with lots of high end, hi-tech gear, we are starting off getting mostly inexpensive stuff so we can get on the trail and as we go along we will upgrade things a little at a time. We have just about everything we need, all that is left is a backpacking tent that I plan to buy next month, then we will start are journey.

We plan on doing several short 2 or 3 day weekend trips a year and hopefully at least one long trip a year of 5 days or more. This is the PLAN, we will see what actually happens LOL