Adventures with BeeGee

My First Attempt to Make Hot Sauce Not too long ago, I decided to try my hand at making my own hot sauce.  I was partially inspired by two sources to finally diving into making my own food.  The first, most of the best hikers and backpackers dehydrate their own food, which gives a lot more options for eating on the trail.  The second source was a podcast on Science Friday where culinary scientist Dr. Ali Bouzari discusses how to make hot sauce.  My plan is to eventually develop a tasty vinegar based hot sauce that I can take out on the trails to improve my eats just a little.      The “Hot” Sauce The first sauce I attempted to make was of the hot variety and I started the process on October 15.   For this sauce, I bought serrano peppers, habanero peppers, and Chile de arbol peppers.  Next, I roasted the peppers using the broil (500 F) setting for 15 minutes and then flipped the peppers and roasted for 10 more minutes.  Roasting peppers is supposed to create a rich, smoky

A First Time Hang Gliding (Videos) Today Athena is back with another guest post and she has a been on an exciting new adventure.  If you have ever wanted to go hang gliding, then have a look at all the fun Athena had. Who knew there was hang gliding in central Texas? I thought you needed cliffs to jump off for that so I had no idea what to expect when my mother told me she got us a Groupon for an introductory lesson in hang gliding. Then I proceeded to not think about it for a month because frankly I was quite scared. The night before I decided to quickly google tandem hang gliding to get a sense of what I was in for… I am not sure it helped or created my unease. Hang glider just after take off.  Courtesy of Wikimedia We were told to show up at 9 am wearing layered exercise clothes so I wore a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, a light sweater (that I removed for the lesson), and running shoes (but hiking shoes would have been slightly more appropriately…or at least that’s what

A Few Suggestions on How to Spend Your Halloween At the end of this week, we have that great holiday of Halloween.  So, if you are looking for something to do almost last minute that isn’t just going house to house for candy, then hopefully this guide will help you come up with some ideas.  Most of my suggestions will be Halloween oriented, but there are a few that aren’t.  And, as always most will be outside suggestions.      A huge zombie walk NPS Calendar One great place to look for events is the National Park Service’s event calendar .  The calendar won’t always include every event because individual parks add pdf flyers to their specific site and these are unsearchable.  For Texans, there are 12 National Parks listed in under the NPS calendar.  I only found 2 parks having events on the 31 st .  Padre Island National Seashore On the 31 st , Padre Island will be having 3 events .  First thing in the morning there will be a birding tour, after lunch there w

Ways to Carry Water and Making Sure Your Dog Can Drink it Today we will be covering dog hydration again, but looking more specifically at water systems.  While it’s important to have enough clean water, it is not the only consideration you should have in mind when planning a trip with your dog.  One important issue to consider is how you plan to carry water for your pup and the method of getting the water to your dog.    All the gear we have accumulated to ensure BeeGee has water In a previous post, A Guide to Keeping Your Dog Hydrated , I talked about ways to keep your dog hydrated on outdoor adventures.  Today, I am going to share the products BeeGee uses for water; when they work best; and their issues. At a Base Camp When BeeGee and I are out on adventures with a base camp, our REI Dog Water Bowl is the best bowl for the job.  Unfortunately, REI doesn’t carry it anymore, but carries a very similar Ruffwear bowl  (its more expensive though!).  The bowl weighs

Walking the River Round 1 On the other end of the hiking spectrum from the previously reported Goodwater Loop is the Museum Reach of the San Antonio River Walk in San Antonio, Texas. The San Antonio River Walk offers over fifteen miles of continuous paved trails stretching from the Witte Museum in the North to Mission Espada in the South. Given the length of the trail I have decide to break it down into several sections; today's trek was just under 3.75 miles round trip. This trip will focus on the walk from the Pearl Complex to Navarro Street. This trip I was solo, since my wife jenny has to work on weekdays. The Background: Location: San Antonio, Texas Admission: Free Elevation: 620 to 675ft Weather: Sunny and lovely, 80 to 85F Difficulty: Easy Website: http://www.thesanantonioriverwalk.com/ As I touched on earlier, I have decided to break the River Walk into four easily walkable segments. Today we’ll walk the South Museum Reach. This time of year, l

How  to Train for Hiking There are many reasons why people want to hike and backpack: enjoying nature, staying healthy, aspiring photographer, or fun family event.  Whatever your reason for getting outside, you need to be fit enough to accomplish your objective.  If not, hiking will quickly turn into a military style ruck march where you are miserable, head down, and only worrying about one foot in front of the other.  That is not how the outdoors was meant to be explored.   Its time to get in shape to fully enjoy hiking trips. Courtesy of Wikimedia What Type of Exercise is Hiking? Hiking and backpacking are primarily aerobic activities (think running and walking), but there are aspects of anaerobic activities as well (think sprinting or weight lifting).  Hiking is an aerobic activity because it is pretty much just walking with a pack on over uneven terrain.  The reason hiking is anaerobic is usually the need for leg power.  You need that leg power to jump across a s

Quick Lunch Recipe: Salami and Cheese Tacos Today we have another quick recipe and one of my favorites, salami and cheese tacos.  I never make hot meals for lunch and try to spend my entire lunchtime break just relaxing or napping.  BeeGee agrees with that sentiment and will instantly nap after she has her lunch snack.  This is why I lean to cold, quick lunch recipes.    This is my go to classic Italian salami courtesy of Olympic Provisions Salami and other cured meats make great hiking foods because they can be carried a long time without going bad.  It is how meat was preserved before refrigeration, so it has been product tested for at least a few hundred years.  The same is true most hard cheeses.  The “harder” the cheese, the less water the cheese contains; therefore, hard cheeses can be carried just as long as cured meats without needing refrigeration.  However, once you cut into your salami or cheese, they will usually go bad much quicker.  This is because bacter

Our Honeymoon Trip to Peru and Machu Picchu Well, to everybody out there, I’m Linda, Jarrett’s wife, and BeeGee’s other special person (maybe).  I’ll explain why you hardly hear from me (other than this is BeeGee’s & Jarrett’s blog) towards the end of the post. Today we are posting about our trip to Machu Picchu, an Incan city more than 500 years old in the mountains of Peru.  Jarrett and I went there for our honey moon back in January of 2013.   Unfortunately, traveling to South America with BeeGee would have been difficult, so she stayed with a friend while we went on this trip.  These are the Machu Picchu’s quick stats:                         Country: Peru Documents Needed: For U.S. citizens traveling through the country for 90 days or less, a U.S. passport ( http://lima.usembassy.gov/ ) Method of Access: Unless you do the 10 day or 3 day Inca trails, then you have to take a train ride, followed by a bus ride. Recommended Articles for the Journey: Plenty of drinki