Preparedness Challenge #21

Saturday is here again. My time flies! This week, instead of making some kind of purchase to put away food, or canning, or growing something, we practiced a bit of camping. (But you know that already.)

It was good to find out that we could still rough it even though this was a fairly easy camping experience. It had been about 6 years since we went camping. The last time we spent 4 days in the Tecate desert of Mexico in a pop-up trailer in 100+ heat with a three year old and another child recovering from strep throat. Don't ask... I have no reasonable explanation other than we had planned the trip and didn't want to disappoint the older girls were really looking forward to the experience. But oh... the heat, and dirt, and dust!

I really felt I deserved a T-shirt that said "I SURVIVED THE TECATE DESERT".

I'm still waiting for my shirt.

Anyway, I took along my 72 hour kit, extra cash, and some other supplies that I hadn't packed in the past because I'm a little bit wiser now. It really didn't take up much more room, and I liked knowing it was there. In fact, I was pleased as punch with myself because I remembered so many "necessities". I think I only forgot one minor thing. There were some items I meant to get, but I never got around to getting them. It's amazing what you can do without when you need to.

For our next trip, I'm going to be adding one very surprising item: a blue tarp.

Photo Credit

Did you know that blue is the easiest color for a plane to spot if you need rescuing? And a tarp can be used for so many things:

• shelter
• extra protection over tents from rain
• wind break
• picnic table cover (either over the table as a cloth or over the food to protect it from insects)
• a privacy panel
• a mini "shower stall" for a bucket shower (provided you have the right tree configuration to hang it on)
• a ground cover if you need to sleep directly on the ground

Photo Credit

We use tarps around the homestead on occasion as well and I'm thinking this would make a good preparedness item to keep on hand. If you had to pack out suddenly - and I mean WALK out - a tarp is a light weight item that can be used for lots of things. I'd get at least one blue and a couple in green with brown on the reverse side so that you have one that isn't visible. You don't always want to be noticed.

Costco recently had some nice quality tarps in both colors, so hopefully I'll be able to grab one on my next trip.

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