Testing out the Hennessey Hammock...

Last Friday I finished medical school. So, to celebrate, Taylor had a cook out and had some friends over. Taylor is such an awesome cook, the meal was delicious. I completely pigged out! After that, Doug and I went camping. I had previously got 2 jungle quality Hennessey Hammocks for my trip to the Costa Rican jungle... and loved it. If you've never seen these hammocks, let me tell ya, it is the coolest adventure camping equipment you will ever own! My hammock weights less than 2 lbs, fits into a tiny sack, setup/tear down in about 5 min, and its environmentally friendly! I will not camp without it. So, Doug wanted to test it out...

Jeeping and hiking in...

Check out our set up! It was so nice and compact... we camp right next to a creek... looking up to see trees and stars.

Doug hoisting all our food to get it out of bear's reach.

I was told to avoid these... 3 leaves of terror... poison oak; and the hairy ball... hum... no comment.

Ok, so, we both convinced each other to go bare bone... minimalist camping, no sleeping bag, only a jacket and a thin blanket... Ouwy... we were both up for most the night thinking of ways to get warm... we were both SOOOOOOO COLD! I was shivering and thinking about the warm Costa Rican beach water and then my thoughts would shift to dreaming about my warm foot box of my 15 degree Marmot sleeping bag... Then, I would start thinking about what if I started packing and hiking out... then I felt it was forever long and looked at my watch hoping its about 4-5am so to tough out another 1 hr to get up and warm up... AWWW its only 2:30am! So, I started getting into fetal position and trying to do everything to warm up my legs... then, I decided to put the rain tarp on my hammock... well it worked... probably raised about 10 degrees in there... as I hear the leaves rustle and creek water churn, I fell asleep into the starlight. Then, I woke up at 6:30am, Doug was already out heating a pot of green tea... what a warm encouragement for the day. What a night! I will never do that again without my sleeping bag.