Hiking Alone Together: 3 Parks, 1 Story

when the world pulls us apart and we're forced to live in isolation we return to the thing that all of humanity has in common the natural soil and air and sunshine from which we came [Music] stay sane stay safe and join us on our socially distanced journey into nature [Music] our story begins with me on an early summer day after packing up i set off and headed north towards salimony lake [Music] after a peaceful drive through the indiana countryside i reached the blood route trailhead i signed in and paid the camping fee then made my way onto the trail which went parallel to the road for a little while okay feels good to be on the trail that was a short drive i'm gonna hazard a guess and say that i'm the first person on the trail today beautiful day perfect weather i think it's gonna be pretty good and later in the afternoon i was starting my journey with thomas okay welcome to the andrew and thomas portion of the socially distance episode of course we're carpooling which kind of defeats the purpose but yeah we don't want to contaminate brian and robbie with our filth yeah there's a lot of filth in this car so we are headed to cyber grove metro park which is actually in columbus this is the first time ever going camping in columbus whenever we go anywhere my parents are like this looks just like high banks metro park why don't you just go there and now they'll be incredibly justified yeah this one they went we had a short drive to scioto grove metro park [Music] after driving on a dusty gravel road we made our way to the trailhead and readied our gear [Music] near the parking lot we saw some poison hemlock plants growing several feet high there were also some aster flowers thickets of goldenrod and dog bane and red clover flowers but after examining the plants around us we made our way to the trailhead where we checked the map reviewed and finalized our plans and then headed out for our overnight backpacking trip we would hike south on the rei trail before looping around in an open meadowy area and heading back to the trailhead [Music] i had also headed out making my way south there was an accident on the road and hopefully no one was seriously hurt i had to take a detour but eventually i made it to the trail i would be hiking the same trail robbie and i had done a couple years ago at wayne national forest so i actually got a pretty late start to the hike there was some accident or something on the road now i've got about maybe two and a half good hours of daylight thinking i'll probably hike for maybe an hour and a half of that set up camp have some dinner and just uh see how the night goes as brian was setting out i was hiking in the sunshine so the trail is a roughly 14 mile loop the campsites are probably about halfway so i'm looking for like seven miles today seven miles tomorrow oh my god dude you could not have asked for better weather than what it is today the light of the day and the cool breeze made this a perfect summer day all around the tranquil melody of nature filled the air this is so peaceful and relaxing that i kind of just want to sit down in this field and not keep walking [Music] the bloodroot trail is a 14-mile loop that cuts through meadows forests and farmlands in many sections including the one i was in now the trail ran parallel to itself it also often intersects with itself making the trail a series of figure eights i would be hiking to the campsites near the halfway mark of the trail camping overnight then finishing the loop the next morning [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] in some areas there were caution signs most likely because this trail is also used by fast-moving snowmobiles in the wintertime well it's a little sunnier than i anticipated even today i have to get out of the sun sooner sunscreen up that's one thing i do not do anymore is i do not mess with the sun wow dude this place is just the word i was looking for but apparently didn't find was idyllic i guess somebody lost some sandwiches man speaking of sandwiches it is right around lunchtime and i'm starving right now if you saw my last video you know that the food choices are gonna be very very spartan man this is why i miss hiking with the other guys man they always bring good food i just bring garbage so unlike brian and robbie's trail the trail we're doing is a lot shorter and a lot easier part of the reason for that is because this trail is designed to get people who have never backpacked before into backpacking right here from the trailhead it teaches you the seven principles of leaving no trace you can go buy each one and see how well we do rule seven was be considered by others i'm not gonna be considerate of you it didn't take long before i came across flowers that caught my attention so these flowers here are called dame's rockets i only recently learned this but this plant is actually edible in some places the the vegetable arugula is referred to as like a sort of rocket but this is in the mustard family you can tell because one the flowers have four petals a lot of mustard plants will have four petals it's also got these long thin little seed pods which is pretty common of mustard plants but yeah you can use the leaves raw and i've actually thrown them on like pizza and kind of let them cook a little bit in the heat after baking a pizza and it's just like having arugula on top of something is this the same type of mustard that goes next to my ketchup it's probably related on on some level but no you look very angelic right now because last time you asked me to come film you so there was a scene in the hawaii episode where i said if you if you squint your eyes you can pretend like this is the midwest if you stop and you you kind of squint your eyes a little bit it really does kind of look a lot like the midwest but here we are and i feel like we're just back in hawaii and it was actually andrew who said that so i'm not that crazy but it does smell different it smells like i don't know less less tropical along the trail there were past shooting off towards the riverbank so we decided to take a quick detour [Music] the river was calm and there were interesting trees growing along its banks so a feature that you always see in metro parks in columbus are these really big sycamore trees lining the riverbank and in fact one of the largest sycamores i think is in columbus but they're pretty characteristic because they have this really interesting camo pattern white bark although sometimes towards the bottom of the tree it's a little more like a typical tree but i have heard that uh if you tap this tree and you drink the sap in it it kind of like takes any water and purifies it so you know an emergency scenario would be a good source of water so actually another thing that often grows in these metro parks are papa trees and in this area in particular there's like a good amount of them usually like i don't see them getting this big they're kind of more of an undergrowth tree but yeah they've got these huge broad leaves obviously one of my favorite trees and unfortunately we are just past the season where all the beautiful flowers are coming out um but yeah those are super pretty too one other way i can identify pawpaws is by looking at the bark sometimes it has these little like almost holes or eyes in the bark it's super subtle but once you pick up on it you won't miss it violet leaves also grew in the ground below and the sun shone through the tops of the walnut trees above [Applause] [Music] we hadn't hiked a whole lot so we continued on as the others kept on i stopped to take in the familiar scenery so the first time robbie and i came here we did hike this same loop starting at the same area but it was dark we got here at night we didn't actually see that dike over there and that's where we finished our hike when we met up with andrew and finish the next couple days so right now i can actually see where i'm going to be finishing this hike [Music] i kept hiking on the trail taking in large rocks and bluffs from solid ground [Music] the lake was beautiful to take in but there were also more familiar sights on the trail okay so if you remember from our last wayne video this is actually the junction that robbie and i split off of to go find our campsite but at that point it was dark and i think we had basically assumed we'd have a better chance of finding a campsite up there than along the lakeshore trail um but since there's plenty of time i think i might just stick along lake shore trail see what we find along the trail i came to a parking lot where i stopped for a bite of lunch in the meantime i continued hiking through the meadows after a little while i came to a highway crossing it turns out the road was closed for construction on a bridge down the way well that makes crossing slightly easier which is nice as a group of other backpackers pass me i stopped to have an afternoon snack one of our viewers christian sent some cookies from guam chamorro chip cookies they're kind of like little cookie crisp style cookies i'll be honest i ate most of the bag already once again with only me in charge of food my other much more sad option was cheese and tortillas in all honesty i'm slightly embarrassed about it because it looks so sad but this is actually really good i mean it's got the calories a little protein probably some calcium the food groups does it have all the food groups i don't know after that i applied more sunscreen and was on my way looks like right after you cross that road you're about just at the one mile marker this is an interesting trail because it's a loop but it's kind of like it's got lots of figure eights and you cross over and then on the way back you go on the other side of the figure eight when you look at the map really doesn't seem like that much distance because it's kind of intertwined for an overnighter though 14 miles is like perfect just ahead i could see another section where the trail ran parallel to itself just a few feet away this is a parallel trail over here so on the way back i'll be taking this trail it's basically the same trail but then i came to another road crossing and the trail entered a slightly more wooded area eventually the trail spilled out into a small parking lot where i was again met with open sky a vulture sword above and the scenes of rural farmland surrounded me this area is not really out in the forest or anything it's just right next to a bunch of roads bunch of farms i'm not sure what this little parking lot is it says wildlife management area this looks cool though as the trees swayed in the wind i got my bearings and continued on i'm not sure i've had a more peaceful day in a very long time with the strange combination of scenery sparse trees meadows and rural civilization this hike almost felt like a peaceful walk through a park or neighborhood this is the first trail i've ever been on that has a wrong way now my guess is that's because this is a snowmobile route also so you don't want snowmobiles crashing into each other you want it to be one way i imagine they wouldn't really care if hikers go the other direction back in ohio we had stopped to admire a weird looking tree let's have a conversation about this tree because i walked by us i was like man that bark is cool but i don't know what tree this is this is a hackberry i feel like this is the kind of bark that robbie would want to like sandpaper smooth or something phobia yeah they get really bumpy and warty looking but you know with a name like hackberry i feel like there's got to be berries yeah yeah there are there's none right now they typically come out like in october okay um but they're kind of like these tiny little berries with a big pit yeah it's kind of like dry but i feel like it has a figgy flavor like a mildly sweet fig flavor so is this something that you could eat or yeah yeah or you could i've actually made the other guys eat it one time in our mammoth cave trip all i remember is this bark is tripping me out here yeah yeah good thing robbie's not here let's go [Music] and just up ahead was another interesting treat so we were walking by these huge trees and like the sycamore these also tend to enjoy being near water and you didn't know what these were until you saw the leaves right right but how did you know the base on the trunk after like seeing them for a while like the bark just has this like chunky kind of look to it this is definitely some chunky bark but i did have to check the leaves to be sure raisin bran chunk see i know the leaves because they got the shiny tilt like tint to them and they reflect the sun a lot and uh actually the dead giveaway for me was this little ball of cotton that just rolled on by and i was like oh where's the cottonwood yeah the other thing i love about the leaves is when the wind blows they like shiver way more than the other leaves when a normal tree has wind it just kind of sways but a cottonwood each individual leaf shivers thomas also spotted this buckeye tree with reddish leaves likely due to wet conditions and in the distance a blue jay perched on a branch [Music] it's funny because we were hearing like construction sounds earlier but it still feels like very secluded and naturey and but we're not even five miles away from downtown yeah i like it i like that the scioto is right there i like that you got these viney trees over here it's really weird there's a big sycamore right there whoa that is this is actually really soft did you hear that yeah i don't know if you could all hear that but we just heard a barred owl hooting it's funny because we're like not even like a quarter mile in but it already feels like we're encountering like a lot of nature's like i feel like sometimes i see more wildlife in the city almost like you know what i mean yeah yes this is their one haven everything else has kind of been yeah yeah pushed aside [Music] we again came to a path that branched towards the river and opened up into a wide expanse [Music] we decided to explore around a bit and take in the scenery this looks just like a bunch of rivers that i've canoed in various parts of ohio i mean the brown is the main feature but like but even the way the riverbank looks it kind of reminds me a lot of that like summers spent during high school and college this is the sciota river the word sciotto comes from the window word for deer the deer were probably such an important source of food for people i also heard that the reason this got its name dear river is that deer are plentiful here in ohio and every summer they would come and they'd have to shed and along the sycamore and the the cottonwood they'd they'd scratch their their fur and they'd shed and all the fur would go into the river and so they would see just the hair floating floating down the side oh it looks like it was all deer hair that's the side more myth than that there's all sorts of birds everywhere and i'm noticing some sort of swift or swallow so i think these are northern rough wing swallows but you can tell how their wings are kind of like bent backwards uh like a very aerodynamic and they keep skimming right along the water looking for insects and stuff to eat it's really cool to see we also saw some sort of fish jumping from the water now it was back to the main trail in the meantime i was enjoying the beautiful lake scenery but the weather was becoming questionable well the prophecy has come to pass and it is raining so i've got my rain gear for the time being it's very very light like i'm standing on the trees i barely even feel it so hopefully it'll just pass by it's just a really really quick drizzle but i'm hoping i find that campsite soon definitely gonna set up at the next one i find thankfully the drizzle didn't last too long and i continued on [Music] i actually passed up a group of campsites that people were actually staying at so that was about two miles into the trail which is good because it means that there are campsites somewhere around here but it's still too early so i'm gonna go a little further and see if i can find something maybe about three miles in at the worst i'll hike back to these [Music] further up the trail i found an established but cramped campsite and considered setting up so right as i had decided to settle for that less than good campsite ran into a couple people and they told me that they saw more campsite clearings up ahead so i decided i'd take my chances and go check those out instead there's a little entrance here could be a campsite although i do hear voices still may be taken but i think i'm gonna go check it out as i explored further i heard more voices yeah i definitely think someone's over there so i'm not to bother scrambling through that bramble back on the trail there was a chorus of frogs sort of sounds like those radiation detectors as it turns out they were northern cricket frogs singing happily from the lily pad covered lake okay so i came along a junction which connected the backpacker trail to the lakeshore trail the backpacker trail was the one that me and robbie took on our second day here to kind of extend our trip but i double backed just a little bit and found a pretty decent campsite and i did say i would take the first campsite i found and it looks like it will support a hammock and it's got a decent fire ring so honestly i'm glad with this i'll take it and i'm exhausted as brian settled into camp i continued winding down the blood route trail the trail was much more wooded here wow okay this first actual forest i've been in i wonder how long it's going to last actually i'm going to take this opportunity to take a break real quick it's a little muddy but much less likely for there to be ticks here okay i've been hiking for about three miles i'm not tired at all but for some reason just today it just feels so relaxing i don't feel like a particular need to go very fast i think it might also be because i don't have to hike that much so in my brain my expectations are just take it easy oh man i hope it doesn't rain tonight because i couldn't find my rain jacket [Music] so a painted turtle sunbathed in a nearby stream before long i was back in the sun myself yeah this is a very interesting trail which is kind of like a mode path in the middle of a bunch of farmland i wonder what they're growing i'm like 90 certain that's corn but fortunately i don't have andrew with me it was indeed corn and so i continued hiking along acres and acres of [Music] cornfield [Music] so [Music] you know i'm sure life could get better than this but no reason to get greedy no reason to get greedy indeed with everything happening in the world it's amazing how much of an escape the outdoors can be when you're alone and surrounded by the serenity of nature or even rural farmland reality can seem so distant being beneath the sunshine is a good reminder that it really is the small things in life that make us the happiest trying to figure out what this place reminded me of it's glacial lake state park i went to that place with uh two of our viewers alex and daryl and it's a similar type of prairie well this is farmland but it was a prairie with a path carved through it it feels like i've been hiking for a lot longer but i'm only at mile three and to get to the campsites man that's past mile seven i would have to really start booking it it's 3 54 p.m maybe we'll see yeah let's let's get down to business [Music] before long i reached a junction backpack campsites to the right that's a nice looking bench then i came up to a sign showing how far the campsites were well on the sign-in sheet it looked like nobody else had taken campsite three i could either go point six miles right to it or i could go quite a few miles around this way to get to it considering it gets dark at like 8 or 9 p.m i feel like i still got four hours i might as well take this i'll just be sitting in camp otherwise yeah let's go i can smell a campfire i think but i can't see one the trail took me back into the open here i saw something intriguing in somebody's backyard oh i actually saw that on the way in on the road but these guys have a rc car track that's pretty cool just under four hours of hiking let me take a oh for a little while maybe get some food oh man i'm pretty tired pretty tired now thomas and i continued hiking along the river past a large fallen cottonwood tree [Music] we came to a junction with a marker pointing towards the first campsite as the clouds rolled by we kept hiking and i spotted some mushrooms that peaked andrew's interest oh what are these oh wow these are inky cat mushrooms and it's kind of cool because you can see all the different stages from fresh to inky and then also the mushrooms that are kind of in between but as these mushrooms sprout and then get older in age they kind of melt into this black goop and that's actually how they spread the spores but the fresh ones are actually edible you know perfectly fine to cook and eat but if you eat them with alcohol you could get sick or poisoned because of the way that the alcohol reacts with the chemical in the mushroom so don't get a drunk off your mushroom saute [Music] as we continued the golden evening light shimmered through the leaves and birds sang out from the treetops now we entered a relatively flat and open section of the forest this area looks like it could be a campsite but i don't think it actually is but it's got like wide open expanse for a place that's so close to downtown columbus this place really really lives up to its name it really is a grove down here yeah that's true it's like so open everywhere here it's just something you really don't see anywhere in ohio yeah everything is usually pretty much thick and dense it's super pretty here like it really does feel like we're just way away from the city [Music] along the muddy path we saw more signs of nearby trees so if you're wondering why cottonwood got its name cottonwood you can probably take a guess why so when the wind blows these things just go for acres and acres and if you live in a neighborhood where these are plentiful on the side of the road you'll just see these scattered up it almost looks like snow look how easily this falls apart just like with one little breeze [Music] it's pretty cool actually i didn't think it'd be that easy now the trail took us out of the forest into a quiet sunny field [Music] i love parts of trails that look like this where you just come out and it's suddenly a big open meadow especially at this time of day when the sun is just right yeah yeah this is the beginning of summer yeah this is the real beginning of summer now i think it's well deserved after this winter yeah yeah also that hill there we've talked about the idea of ugin before but it's like the idea of like looking at the top of a hill and not knowing what's beyond it that's kind of what that hill makes me feel wanna get to the campsite let's do it this is campsite two dang this is nice maybe we should have done two instead of three i don't know there's not a whole lot of privacy yeah well that's what the ranger told me is like this is right by the trail and yeah i don't think campsite three is that far i think if we just keep walking for like five minutes we'll get to it i'm okay with that yeah my trail continued through the woods where i saw a beach tree that had seen its fair share of people the sun and summer heat had left me feeling ready to settle down for the day and eventually i came to an intersection okay i just came from down here this is like a four-way intersection the path continues this way and there's a loop and it'll come back to this point i'm not feeling super gun hoe today so i think i'm going to skip this loop i'm just going to continue on down this way there's six campsites like i said i'm gonna try to do number three that's what i put on the signing sheet but i'll just see which ones are open yeah hopefully there's not some amazing view i don't think there is okay let's go i continued through the woods and spotted some daddy longlegs in the leaf litter below as the birds sang from the treetops all right this is campsite number six smelly campfire over there let's hope for my sake that not all of them are already taken i don't think they should be should be fine soon i found another campsite okay here's site number five somebody's already there as i kept looking for vacant campsites i came back to another intersection i had passed by earlier oh that's where i had lunch just a second ago well i guess i could have skipped that loop that's okay because now i know for sure that campsite five and six are full so if all the other campsites are full then i may just be out of luck but we'll find out okay well campsite four is available since i put three on the sign-in sheet i'll go to three but if three is full i got four to come back to okay it looks like campsite three is taken i'm gonna go back to four maybe one and two are open but i know for sure four is so i'm going back and if in the meantime somebody got to four we're sharing a campsite luckily campsite 4 was still available and i took a load off and checked for ticks then before doing anything else i began to set up my shelter for the night after countless times not setting up our shelter as soon as we get to camp we finally learned that you need to set up immediately because you don't know when it's going to rain and you also will only get more tired later on that being said i'm not putting the rainfly on because i'm going for the gamble i wonder if brian and andrew are already at their campsites all right so since it's a short hike and it's a solo hike i thought i'd bring a meal that was a little more worth it but first i gotta get a fire started fortunately around here there's lots of nice little twigs probably shouldn't have any problem okay i know this is sacrilege to some people that will remain unnamed but i'm gonna use some wet fire to get this started because i don't have the patience or the energy today i was using the blast match that andrew got for my birthday last year all right let's see how this goes oh there it goes ready all right all right all right all right hopefully this wood is dry enough to burn okay there we go there we go yeah it's catching oh yeah come on all right i think we're safe i think we're in the clear now okay we did it now obviously not the exact same way that andrew does it but i will take it the trail to the next campsite brought us out into the open there's a building over there yeah we're at a junction now there's campsite three oh talk about living the life of luxury yeah how's it look it's our little private oasis look at this all right so be honest which site looks cooler to you man probably the other one yeah yeah did someone else reserve that one no actually they were both open and i feel like no one's gonna be reserving it by now i'm okay with that we called the nature center and they let us switch our campsite reservation last minute and on the way back we found a tasty snack so these are raspberries you can tell because when you pull them off there's no green bit on the inside if the green part stayed attached then that would be a blackberry and it's probably still under ripe because i think these are actually supposed to be black raspberries but i am gonna give it a shot it's actually not bad it's like kind of tart not super sweet but it's not as like pucker mouth as i thought it would be making sure mine is bug free right now i come back in a couple weeks but for finding something on the side of a trail that's not bad at all so we were concerned because this is a meadow that there wouldn't be any place to hang up the uh tarp but the beautiful people at the metro park wow they really thought of everything what a tough hike we're not even taking like a big load off right now why can't all backpacking trips feel like this yeah this is amazing oh yeah as the evening set in it was time for us to prepare a fire first i arranged the burnt logs to create a platform for our fire next i split the wood that the park generously provided at each campsite and feathered some of the pieces for tinder and kindling admittedly my knife was a tad doll but nicely split pieces of hardwood are usually a breeze to feather regardless as andrew feathered sticks i gathered some scraps for extra kindling now it was time to start the fire i definitely could have made more feather sticks but we were eager to get dinner cooking beautiful so there we go there we go eventually we had a flame and we added our kindling keep going [Music] and put the whole thing on my whole thing yeah i think so we didn't quite have enough tinder to keep the flames going to ignite our kindling and eventually it all went out why are you incompetent because thomas was rushing me i knew we needed more tinder i knew it wouldn't work that's fair that's fair meanwhile i had an idea for a food crime i could commit thanks to another item courtesy of christian now whether it's good or not that remains to be seen well i'm sure it's going to taste good but good in the kind of more absolute sense hot and spicy spam apparently this is one of his favorite things to bring camping i'm going to put it in my cheese quesadilla i'm not exactly well prepared for this but i figure you know just open it up take a few pieces out heat them up [Music] i mean that does not look appetizing i mean look at that dude that looks terrible i have had spam before though so i'm pretty sure it'll be just fine but why would anybody make this yeah i mean it is spicy though there's my cheese in there could be a really bad idea we'll see no this is a great idea this is the best idea not one of the best ideas this is the best idea in just a moment i would discover that nobody should ask me for ideas put the whole lot of you right on there maybe it doesn't look the most appetizing uh in fact let's say that looks the least appetizing but i bet it'll taste decent okay let's give it a taste not bad took a second for the flavor stockholm syndrome to kick in but once it did i was sitting pretty well wow so to elaborate a little more on what i'm cooking it's not like super fancy but i did bring some frozen flank steak which i like thaw over the course of the day and some green peppers which i pre-cut and then some seasoning hopefully this turns out well with a nice bed of embers i started cooking my steak on an old pan that i didn't mind getting scorched the meat sizzled nicely but parts of it were still frozen together cooking this is definitely gonna be a challenge i added sliced green bell peppers to the pan then season the steak with a mix including salt and pepper the steak was browning so i simmered it with some water now it was time to give this campfire steak a taste test now let's try the green peppers first still got some crunch to them good taste of course for the main dish just gently cut this here it's got a good taste to it a little chewy but it tastes good and obviously the standards are a bit lower right now i would call that a success you know i wonder what the other guys are eating tonight i can tell you it's not steak or maybe it was so i forgot i actually did bring foolproof tinder which is birchbark which would have actually made that totally successful if i had just put that on but you wanted to see if you could do it the all-natural way sure yeah so now i'm scraping this bark so that it turns into a dust that we can actually spark because even though the bark is really flammable um you still want something that can catch a spark in the first place look at that dust right there yeah what if i sneeze that would suck also because of the pandemic i'd rather you know that was so fast this time that was ridiculous dude it's not even fair yeah birch park is incredible is it the oils in it yeah the oils just light up even if it's wet how about those twigs those twigs aren't catching are they twigs might be damper than we thought i thought they were pretty brittle i just snapped them in half yeah i'm not sure there they go oh yeah they're going they're going they're just taking their sweet time now that the fire was going steadily it was time to prepare our own steak dinner so today we're making shish kabobs they're kind of deconstructed so we gotta put the meat on separately here and i think we can afford to put two on one don't you think i think we can put three on one three on one last one [Music] dang you can hear that sizzle along with the steak we were cooking some vegetables and grilling extra bits from our steak this is the gristle here just the fat we're just gonna let that cook there [Music] [Applause] delicious the meat was cooked perfectly over the fire now time to indulge [Music] and sink it holy crap that is like the most tender piece of beef i've ever had in my life this is so good oh my god that is a medium steak that is good that is so good ah even got a little bit of crispiness on the outside yeah it's got like it's definitely been seared by that fire and it's got so much flavor oh my god well done tom there's two more let's go grab one another skewer here my favorite thing about this is how crunchy the outside is yeah yeah yeah fire yeah these are like crispy but so tender on the inside i'm glad we're not in bear country when i eat this it makes me realize that's really all you need to be happy like what else yeah just me on a fire what else do i need in life right now [Music] more steak was cooking on the fire and we also had our roasted vegetables and gristle to attend to [Music] our second course had all cooked to perfection in the embers i have to be careful not to get the ash on all the food here it's a rookie mistake we're not rookies no more look at that oh wow that means onions are perfect everything should be done good lord look at that gristle handler that's all yours [Music] all right bon appetit it smells amazing it smells kind of nostalgic to me [Music] zucchini squash is so good those mushrooms oh my god just like bursting with flavor yes oh my god if you don't like mushrooms come talk to us we'll tell you what to do about that i'll try this gristle piece oh man are you sure you don't want to try to bite this end no that's all yours wow that was so good this is like beef bacon that zucchini is hot dude these are cooked perfectly yeah we got so lucky they're so good or we're both very spacious maybe after five years of doing this by the way oh yeah happy fifth year anniversary yeah adventure archives also happy birthday soon happy birthday to you so andrew and i practically share a birthday we're one day apart in two years what are the chances one out of three hundred sixty four three and 163 363 what are you talking about i'm sorry all right this is why i'm not allowed to talk i don't think the other guys could possibly be having as good of a time as we are yeah i feel bad for them it's kind of weird i did a solo trip uh just a couple of weeks ago and that was like it was really fun and it was energetic and i felt like i you know it felt great but this time knowing that my usual hiking companions are out there hiking somewhere else instead of making me feel less lonely like oh yeah somebody's doing this with me actually ironically it makes me feel more lonely because i'm like man they're not here can't make dumb jokes i had to start my own crappy fire brian usually brings the toilet paper i forgot toilet paper anybody who thinks that they're truly independent and that they don't need other people it's like man unless you're hunting and foraging for food and making your own shelter you rely on other people all the time you just don't know it because you don't actually see any of them even me i don't consider myself the most social person but when you don't have any social interaction with your best friends for a while like okay that's i'm getting tired of that the moments i remember most fondly in life are when i'm like around a fire with friends with food and drinks like that's all i need in life you got fire you got food and drinks but i don't know about friends i could not think of a better way to say goodbye to you to ohio to everyone here and sit around a campfire on probably the nicest day of the entire year yeah yeah right here the only thing i regret is that we didn't do more of this more often i know i don't know when you're trapped in society you forget how easy it is to just like do something like this and how much enjoyment you can get from it trapped in society i've been trapped in my room for the last yeah yeah you know we've all been trapped in our room for the last several months you don't want to have those moments like we're having right now where it's like i wish i did this more often when those opportunities are gone you want to seize that i'm telling you man like that's all it is is you just need like warmth food drinks family and friends you don't need like a marble statue you just need marbled beef marble bee i like that uh after dinner pretty much nothing else to do just go straight to bed i'm gonna sleep really well tonight and i think my plan is to get up kinda early tomorrow get a good start on the hike all right good night [Music] so i ended up sleeping almost 12 hours it's like 11 a.m but i slept really well last night really comfortable i don't really have anything uh to do this morning didn't plan for breakfast so i think what i'm going to do is just pack up and head out [Music] after packing up my gear i headed out of camp and was back on the trail for my hike out [Music] so i haven't really started to see areas that i recognize when i was here with robbie and i at one point we came to road and we kind of just like cut across back onto the lakeshore trail but actually now that i'm talking this river part that i'm walking next to kind of looks familiar because i kind of remember walking next to a river and you know we kind of pointed it out because it looked really nice maybe this is part of the trail that we hiked on now the calm river was complemented by the awe-inspiring sandstone bluffs along the trail [Music] i came to an intersection where things started to look more familiar well now that i'm on the other side of the lake it's starting to look a lot like the area where robbie and i waited for andrew before we met up the cliff side or the ridge face or whatever you want to call it over there kind of starting to remind me of where we camped the second night so i'm going to keep looking maybe i can find the spot where we actually waited so as you can see i'm at the lakeshore vesuvius backpack trail junction i'm almost certain this is where robbie and i waited to meet for andrew so i'm gonna keep going and see if i can spot where we camped too along the trail i found some ghost pipe flowers a parasitic almost translucent plant and then i saw our former campsite and sitting rock well i found it so i think i'm gonna have some lunch it struck me when i woke up this morning it is so peaceful right now it never ceases to amaze me that no matter what is going on in the human world if you come out just into the natural world where we're not really there it is completely different they have almost nothing to do with each other [Music] regardless of human affairs wherever there is nature the universe carries on as always and nothing is better than when you can share that peace with other people this might be pretty obvious to most people but the experience hiking when you're with a group it's so much less about where you go and how many miles you do and what the scenery is like and it's just the people you're with it doesn't really matter we can do a mile a day it's still good times very different feelings each have their own distinct appeal right now i'm missing that group flavor [Music] an unusually cool night had woken andrew and i early in the morning [Music] using the still warm embers and leftover birch bark we got a much needed fire going [Music] we sat in the campfire's warmth for hours talking about our past travels and our hopes for a better future eventually we were off [Music] the trail again took us into the open where there was an overlooked deck and other structures standing nearby [Music] we think this is the old campsite that we were originally going to go to but they've changed it on us since then this is a pretty cool place but you don't really get much of a view or access to the river yeah and you're right next to that building yeah like you're roughing it with a parking lot right behind you yeah you can see why they changed it down the trail we found some interesting plants so this is called autumn olive it's an invasive plant from japan but it's got leaves with like little pores on it and on the other side there's sort of this silvery color on it but this has some berries in the fall that you can eat and they're best when they're already like kind of shriveled up because if you eat a plump one it kind of like dries your mouth out but when the shriveled it's kind of good it's kind of like a little you know craisin or something nice and sweet so down here there's also something called moonseed which is kind of a poisonous lookalike of grape you can tell it's different because it doesn't have serrations and the margins are really smooth but it's a vining plant that grows berries with a little crescent moon shaped seed on the inside uh and unlike the grapes they are poisonous so we're just walking we have no idea what this is looks like a bridge or something you know i think i remember seeing on the map something about a rope bridge actually it almost looks like a rope course yeah this thing is huge we made our way onto the rope bridge which had been very wobbly and disorienting whoa that was cool that's really cool yeah my legs are wobbly like you were saying this is the most unnecessary rope bridge but it was fun you can also take the rock path over there but that's no fun coming out to another meadow this feels a bit like high banks you know this begins the loop all right so we want to go left it doesn't matter the trail now took us onto a loop through a meadow and there were many interesting plants in this new environment okay all right so this is a mulberry tree these actually grow all around the city too we're a little early in the season so most of the mulberries are under ripe and i've heard that the under ripe ones have like some mild toxins i think this is a white mulberry which is the invasive kind but i know that because the leaves are smooth but either way berries are edible i feel like they kind of have a sweet figgy taste but i've got one here that's like as ripe as we can find and i'm gonna try it because it's already turning a little black which is what you want not bad much more tart than most of them are but uh actually i think i see another if you want to try one oh boy here i go trying fruit again wow it was like the smallest explosion ever but it was just barely tart and very sweet but as far as foraging goes brian's find took the cake okay this is a great kind actually this is chicken of the woods and it's really fresh you can tell because of just how clean it is it even feels still like chicken like squishy but you can see there's like no blemishes and it's still got a vibrant orangish almost pinkish color if andrew was here we would definitely be eating this but he's not so i think i'll leave this here just to go through the normal process andrew would definitely have loved to see this for now i continued hiking amid the light summer drizzle one thing that's very noticeable from when i came here with robbie and andrew is the effect the season has on this place it's the early summer right now everything is fully grown and you really can't see the lake at all from the lakeshore trail whereas in our last trip you could just see the lake regardless of where you were on the trail in addition to that a lot of the spots that we hiked along i don't recognize anymore the only ones that i really recognize are the ones that have very noticeable landmarks like the big rock at the camp site we stayed at uh and probably a few others that i'll probably run into on my hike out something about the expansive lake and the downpour really accentuated the solo part of this hike i've had a lot of time on this trip to kind of reflect on solo hiking it's not bad but i can definitely say with certainty that it's not for me and i know a lot of people solo hike and they enjoy the solitude that you get out here but for me even if it was just one other person i think this is an experience that's just better shared with someone i guess that kind of goes with our philosophy since we're filming it we may come out here by ourselves sometimes but we still film it because we still think it's something that's worth being shared with other people ultimately that's what being outdoor teaches you the best and simplest pleasures are even better shared with all as i hiked i had a view of salamani lake and the trail soon led me to another campsite looks like only campsite 1 was empty besides the one i went to wow this would have been a nice campsite too got a nice lakeside view pretty cool homemade bench and plenty of firewood well that's a nice looking lake what a beautiful beautiful morning now it was time to find my way out and though the trip had been somewhat lonely the morning sun kept my spirits high [Music] [Applause] it's strange to encounter beauty when you're alone nature can be overwhelmingly joyful but without anyone to share it with there's also a slight pain of sadness a feeling of wanting to bottle up these feelings of simple pleasure to hold on to them forever [Music] we've said it over and over but our time outdoors has taught us that it's simple pleasures that are the most fulfilling in life we've never felt happier than when we've experienced the warmth of a fire full bellies after a good meal the touch of the wilderness and of course the company and camaraderie of our closest friends and [Music] family [Music] with social strife and global pandemics sometimes it takes getting back to nature to remember that there is still something to hope for that there is still joy in the world [Music] sometimes all it takes to remember is a simple hike at the park the smell of a wildflower or the taste of a forged plant so down here is a type of wild garlic and you can actually see the bulbs growing on the top of the plant and from some of those bobs there's like little leaf looking things coming out of it but you could take each of those little bulbs and break it up and eat it and it tastes kind of like garlicky but you find all sorts of like onion and garlic species growing in the wild all the time but reconnecting with nature isn't just about escaping the problems of life it's about learning what it means to be human to live happily and to bring that back to our everyday life [Music] think about the absolute peace and serenity you feel in nature we believe that everyone is entitled to that kind of peace [Music] and when people can't even have that sometimes they cry out in pain or anguish [Applause] it goes without saying that this has been a rough year for all of us [Music] many of us have lost loved ones dealt with hardship and more when the going gets tough the least we can do is to try and build a world where everyone can have peace escaping to the serenity of the woods is nice but nobler is to return to society and do what we can to bring that peace to others in this world because we can make it through difficult times but only when we act on our desire to share our joy with everyone else [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey i know what robbie's gonna be eating on stream dude i'm like actually legitimately embarrassed at my uncreativity i went to a local place nearby called armadillo burgers and you're going to see one of the most beautiful burgers i thought i thought there could be more after that no no the most beautiful burger what okay well who's this worse mine's probably the worst right i've just got pasta and veggies i got this like chinese food oh there's like shrimp and eggs eggplant and like a fried chicken wing except it's not fried red cooked eggplant can you show it one more time and give a run down with each individual item one more time [Laughter] that looks like very authentic chinese andrew oh shoot what's chinese for cheers gambe genbait ryan you and i were saying it would be either tacos or barbecue right in your defense andrew it was going to be tacos but the taco place next to me closed at three o'clock today so instead i got a burger from a place called armadillo burgers okay with a toothpick that's how you know it's going to be big oh yeah is it as big as an armadillo oh yeah it looks kind of like a mcrib actually look at that all right sorry we left you off thomas but what else that's all right that's right i gotta put the condiments on here so give me a second that's a lot of condiments chicken is good ellie just came out of nowhere that eggplant is good this pizza is a little undercooked shrimp and eggs is really good oh man that's a big burger thomas your chewing is so loud for some reason watching thomas right now is like watching a lion on a gazelle shrimp and eggs is really good actually because like i i always cook eggs at home with like random stuff mixed in but uh the flavor is like super good that's not the trash i make at like 2 a.m don't worry andrew nothing's like the trash you make it to it the way andrew eats at night is the same way i eat when i'm camping by myself it's like that scene when homer's making breakfast when marge is gone oh i'm gonna visit her oh we got two animals at the post like meal this is the first so uh how was everybody's camping trip that we just got back from mine was sad and lonely mine was actually a lot of fun the night before i was going to bed i was like yeah i'm going to bed at like 10 30 and i'm gonna you know get a good night's sleep wake up early start hiking early and then i woke up and i was so comfortable and i was like if i'm going to be out here for just one night i'm going to enjoy this one night i slept into like 11. i think me and thomas were like out by 11. we got really early at home by 12. thomas are you done eating already yep man thomas your concentration still holds up man i do have two post meal surprises let me see if i can grab them if you're getting dessert i'm gonna get sister real quick i ain't got no dessert and here's where i would eat my ice cream if i had some social distancing sucks i don't know if you guys remember when we were in texas the deep south episode we stopped by and look at this because everything is bigger in texas this is a full half gallon i've got this jenny's ice cream it's like some sort of pecan explosion i like how your videos are solid frozen i'll crush my eyes and imagine the ice cream while this is imagining because no picks oh that's a lot of ice cream dude good lord man that's like more than my dinner oh brian and andrew swap spots oh there's the ice cream let me show you all the consequences of living with someone who works at an ice cream store she's like i went up holy cow oh my god all of the ice cream in our freezer right now well well that was quite a post like meal thank you already for joining et cetera what a waste of everybody's time i'll see you guys see ya all right everybody s1 went in why are we still here just to suffer every night i can feel my tripod legs and my lenses even the batteries the camera bodies i've lost the drone i've lost they won't stop hurting i'm the one who got caught up on that log an obstacle above paddling even brian and i was submerged below struggling to get my bearings they came after jasper kapparada too then tom moore the river keeps growing swallowing everything in its path getting bigger and bigger who knows how big now salvador gonzalez i just need him to do one thing i want him to tell natalya [Music] you're looking forward to going on as many adventures with her as possible and you won't rest until you do how long until the episode comes out and we can finally watch it on youtube 17 days 17 days 17 days i hate to rain on your parade but we're not even gonna last 17 hours less birds i mean they're out there less bird this girl megan survived longer than that and she didn't have netflix or tick tock why don't you put her in charge first officer john truitt's log of the starship expedition research llc captain dan vulcan remains unconscious dr lisa truett has examined him and has determined he's living out an entire lifetime in his dreams seize the time live now make now always the most precious time now we'll never come again come on we got the plans from maryson cabbage she wants to give a special shout out to her camping bunnies ginny and tammy help aaron jones let us in i want to give a special shout out to aaron jones parents for a happy anniversary but you gotta let us in we got the plans right here oh god charlie is out charlie's out come on charlie's out take the plans take the plans take the pups your highness it's the transmission we received what is it they sent us hope [Music] it's an honor to finally meet you and mcbride jason bourgeois at your service i'm looking for a murderer he boarded this ship i'm impressed but it is my boat and if you'd like a tour i'd love to give it to you myself [Music] deadliest of enemies but slaves under my command [Music] this will have to wait for the tournament mortal kombat [Applause] man i thought i thought i was doing okay i was like you know ohio doesn't have many scary things out here worst thing that could happen is maybe a turkey wanders its way in the camp completely forgot about coyotes yeah there's a whole pack of coyotes i'll kick a coyote we'll be fine

Channel: AdventureArchives

Views: 84,957

Rating: 4.9366951 out of 5

Keywords: bushcraft, backpacking, hiking, camping, wilderness, survival, outdoors, travel, outdoor recreation, prepping, nature, 4k, wild, survival skills, ray mears, les stroud

Id: fIm2PitUmoQ

Length: 72min 44sec (4364 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 26 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/fam0usm0rtimer]

Saw Lake Vesuvius represented there. Great hiking and general area. Iron Ridge is a nice campground..

[u/cowtownman75]

Adventure Archives! There is a somewhat 'big' community of Ohio Backpackers on youtube.

Also worth checking out 'Schill Brothers Outdoors' for similar content.