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The Robertson's have been outdoor enthusiasts for many years and have taught many classes on outdoor activities.
We invite you to read our informational articles and learn from past experiences.
We update the articles every couple months so please check back often.
Outdoor Sports Articles below
Dutch Oven Cooking / Pop Up Tent Information / Hiking with Less Weight
Cooking With a Dutch Oven
B Robertson
Cooking with a Dutch Oven is fun and easy. Any meal can be cooked in a Dutch Oven that would normally be prepared indoors. The Dutch Oven is a great addition to camping and can be very handy in a power outage. In many parts of the country you can even join club that is designed for fun, cooking, sharing recipes, teaching Dutch Oven cooking, and Dutch Oven Cook offs.
Cooking is simple and easy to master. All you need is a good oven, charcoal, and practice. Dutch Ovens can be purchased in most any sporting goods store and most ovens come with a complete instruction book, a small book of recipes, and a guide for oven temperatures when using charcoal briquettes. Many accessories are available but not necessary to get started cooking. Choose a Dutch Oven with legs that will stand up over the charcoal and a lid that has a lip to hold the charcoal on the lids surface. Several brands of ovens are available and vary in quality. When purchasing your oven you should check for smooth texture inside the oven, a lid that fits. A cast iron oven is the best choice but will weigh the most.
The most common size used for most recipes is a 12” inch oven. The 12” oven will cook a small chicken or a large family sized side dish.
When you get home with your oven the enclosed instructions will tell you how to cure, clean, and cook with your oven. Most kitchen tools will work when cooking with the oven but you remember not to use tools that will scratch and remove the cured surface. I will add that a lid lifter and a lid stand is a great help when cooking with the ovens. Lifting the lid and picking up the oven when hot much is easier when using a lifter. If cooking with campfires coals the lifter will also protect you from the heat as you the oven from the fire. When removing the lid to check the meal the oven lid stand is a handy tool. The stand will protect your lid from dirt and your table from heat.
Once you get started you will find that cooking outdoors has never tasted so good!
More Sports Articles Below
Hiking with Less Weight
B Robertson
Have you ever wanted to take extended hiking trips and found that you have just too much weight in your pack to make a comfortable hike? Have you ever just wanted to find a way to lighten that load by a few pounds?
Well start by taking a serious look at all of your gear. What do you really need as opposed to what you want for a comfortable hike?
Clothing Do you carry extra clothes? If you are carrying extra clothes are you carrying extra Pants and shirts that are light weight and made for hiking? Are you taking long pants and shorts or are you taking the new conversable hiking pants.
You can also purchase shirts long sleeved shirts that are zipped for venting and have sleeves that button above the elbow. You do not always need long and short sleeves when one shirt will work in hot or cold weather.
Look for clothes online and see what is available for
your next camping trip. You might be surprised at what you can find and buy the new bug off clothing and eliminate the need for carrying a couple cans of bug spray.
Meals Do you take hikes where there is plenty of water? If so instant rice meals are a great carb fix and will carry easy and with little weight. Instant soups come in a variety of types and you can buy them all in your grocery store with out the high cost of your camping store that sells only freeze dried meals that taste like cardboard.
If you must have your coffee in the morning try buying the coffee bags that you can by in most supermarkets. This will eliminate the need for extra containers to keep it separate from the rest of the foods.
Plastic eating utensils are a must. Non disposable spoons and forks are sturdy and last forever.
Many new meats and fish containers come in the new foil packages and you can add most any thing to rice and have a casserole type meal.
Gear Take a close look at all the gear you have and decide if you can buy a combination tool. A fine example of one such item has a whistle, campus, and a thermometer all in one.
Everyone should have a good knife when camping but you should not carry five tools. Multi purpose tools come in a variety of sizes and options. You can go back to basics with a good old Swiss Army knife.
Tents When you back pack for several days what is the real need for a tent? Most people need them only for sleep. How much room do you need to sleep? This can be a big weight if you use a tent that is meant for more than sleeping. On one extended trip we used tube tents. A tube tent is not much more than a plastic tube with open ends. We took our two tube tents and put them end to end and slept with our feet in the middle. We used clothes pins for the ends and rocks for the base. Less than one pound each.
Lights How many flash lights do you carry for your trip? How many batteries do you carry in your pack so you will not be in the dark? Consider the newer solar flashlights that charge an internal battery. You can add batteries for back up and you will have many hours of light without the extra weight. You might also consider the new wind up flashlights incase the weather turns bad. And with that thought in mind you might just consider the wind up radio with weather band if you need weather reports while or that long trip.
Cooking You will need a stove for cooking and the biggest weight problem is not the stove but the fuel. You can buy the new plastic fuel containers that are light weight but you still have the fuel to carry. You might consider learning to cook on your campfire. If you cook on your campfire you can cook the casserole type meal mentioned above in one pot. Where there is water all you need is to be able to boil your water and you’re ready to cook.
The best tip of all is to have common sense. Check out your grocery store and try to locate items that will be light weight and tasty.
Pop Up Tent Information
B Robertson
Our first trailer was a pop up tent trailer. It was our first step into the RV life. We quickly learned the ins and outs of a traveling with a pop up tent. We had great fun in our pop up tent trailer and traveled many miles. It was just not suited for what we do on vacation. It was easy to take to places we could never have gone with our travel trailer and the gas costs were not nearly as ghastly as running a big truck that pulls a big trailer.
If you use a tent trailer for camping and stay in one place for several days they are a great addition to the camping experience. You have a small fridge that runs on battery, gas, or electric. You have a cooking area an indoor table and sink. They are easy to pull and can go be towed by less expensive vehicles with smaller engines. They will go where big trailers would never could on back roads. What else could you need for that purpose? In my mind the tent pop up campers are just that, campers. They are wonderful for camping but not long for long distances and daily traveling.
If you take your pop up tent out of the camping setting and start traveling across the country you start to understand several things about tent trailers. You have little space for supplies for long trips, you must move all your supplies you can carry to the storage areas inside and to the floor, and you will have to set up and put down your camper at every RV Park every day you travel.
Some of the new larger models now have a bath room but most are only shower curtains and not doors or real enclosures. Some RV Parks charge for a shower and we have been charged up to three dollars a person a day for showers and the bathrooms. Not all parks are this expensive but any extra charge takes away from your vacation money.
This means you will not be able to reach supplies beyond the door when the tent trailer is down and you better remember your medications or any supplies you need from the inside the trailer daily. It may only take several minutes to put up your tent and unless you have done this in a down poor with wind whipping at your heels you can not appreciate the meaning of wet.
When in a storm the inside of the tent can condense moisture on the tent portion of the inside and have the same problems you would get in a normal tent. You will have gas heater but you will still have cold outside air that creates condensation. The heater works fairly well but it is a tent and there will cold air that comes coming inside and the person sleeping on the outer side can become cool in a windy night. In some areas of the country we have stayed, we have wondered if we would blow away or tip over in the strong winds. You can watch the top portion of the tent move in the wind.
I will add that in an RV Park you are packed in close and in a tent type camper you hear every noise made all night long. I might add that they hear every noise you make as well. We always had movies at night and the radio going in the day time.
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