Girls In The Outdoors Day at John Martin Reservoir

     Last weekend was supposed to be our first camping trip of the year. Notice I said "supposed to be." My brother, sister-in-law and niece camped but our had a small issue so we were only able to make it a day trip. We started off the trip by handing out some Girls In The Outdoors stickers.

 

Ambrosia's hand, Cori, Kelly & Hilary

 

     My sister-in-law forgot her Girls In The Outdoors t-shirt so my niece decided Mommy needed to put the sticker on her forehead.

Cori & Kelly

 

     We loaded up in vehicles and headed to the south side of the lake to start fishing. The water level of John Martin Reservoir is really low right now. I'm not sure many people have ever seen it this low before.

John Martin Dam from the north side of the lake

 

 

     There aren't many dams you can drive across anymore so when we can drive across we take our time and take a lot of pictures as we cross.

The sign at the beginning of the dam

Birds enjoying the water

 

John Martin Dam

I have never been able to take a pictre of this dam without soncoming traffic in the picture

     here is a view of the dam from the south side. Pretty low, but still a cool picture.

View from south side of John Martin Reservoir

     Along with my brother and his family, my friend and her family joined us for the day. This day was a perfect Girls In The Outdoors day that showed the perfect reason why I started this blog. We had several people that fish all the time, a few that fish once-in-awhile and a couple that hadn't fished in many years.

Jordan, Randall, Kelly, Ambrosia & Amber

     One of my favorite parts of both our Girls In The Outdoors trips and our Papa's Fishing Club trups is all the learning that happens. In this photo my Godson is telling my niece about some of his lures in his tacklebox.

Jordan & Cori

     We posed in front of the dam to show off our t-shirts.

Amber, Hilary, Ambrosia & Cori (in the front)

     We decided to check out the river instead of driving back across the dam. This is one of our favorite spots to fish the river. We didn't go down there on that day because the river was so low and the water wasn't flowing. See that bar across the bottom of the bridge support. That is usually either touching the water or in the water.

 

Looking down river.

     It was a fun day for hanging out with friends and family and the weather was gorgeous. I wish we had been able to catch some fish and been able to go camping.

Some RV Orginazation Tips

     Since camping season has begun for most people, I thought I would share some of my RV organization tips I have learned over the 3 years we have owned our motor home. I am always looking for new ways to make things easier in an RV because I get frustrated when I can't find something that I know is in there somewhere.

     First, we'll start with some kitchen and pantry organization. Below is our kitchen in our motor home. One of the things I wish our motor home had was more storage space especially for cooking tools and food. I have found ways to help with the organization issues and also take care of some other annoying little things about an RV. Look at the stove top and you will notice there are no burners on it. It drove us crazy listening to those rattle while we were driving down the road. The people we bought the motor home from, told us they always put something heavy on the burners to keep them from rattling but we thought that was a really bad idea. We combined that problem with another small issue we had to take care of in the kitchen. See that curtained area above the stove hood?

 

     The curtained area above the hood is the spot for the microwave. Most people worry about breaking the glass plate in a microwave while driving down the road, but we added that to the stove burner rattling plan.

 

 

      The inside of our motor home microwave looks like this. Each of those 4 pouches has a stove burner in it and the towel is wrapped around the microwave's glass plate. The pouches fill up the microwave so the plate doesn't move around and each burner is protected in a pouch so it won't hit anything and make a bunch of noise driving down the road.

 

     Each burner pouch is perfect size for 1 burner. There is a piece of padding on the bottom side that adds an extra little bit of protection and the Velcro closure makes it easy to get into the pouch and keeps it closed so the burner stays in the pouch. It is SO nice not listening to those burners rattleing while we're driving down the road.

 

     The next kitchen issue we fixed was the pots and pans storage area and the food storage area. Most RV cabinets are just one large open space with no shelves inside which means you just have to stack everything together. Of course when you stack everything and then drive down a bumpy road, turn a corner or look for something in the cabinet, everything moves and then it becomes a huge mess. To fix this issue, we added some closet and house kitchen cabinet shelving to our RV kitchen storage space. Here is what the pots and pans cabinet looks like. Now, to use that blue pot on the bottom left, I don't have to take both frying pans out to get to it!

 

      Here is the food pantry storage area empty. This is where I was the most excited about adding the shelving. To get a can of soup out was almost impossible if everything had fallen over.

 

      Here is what those cabinets look like full. Those 3 baskets are great for storing small items like spices, cans of Vienna Sausages, gravy mix and other small food items. One thing I decided to do for next year is to take a picture before we empty these cabinets for winter. I couldn't remember where everything went and kept having to move stuff around. After I took this picture I moved everything around 2 more times and then asked my husband to come in and fix it because I was too frustrated.

     Another nice kitchen organization item we added was this little wire basket. It was originally made for silverware drying. My husband cut off the little hooks on the back that were made to hang on a dish drying wrack and we used a few 3M Command hooks to hold it to the wall.

 

      The spices we use the most of while cooking are right by the stove and they can stay there for the ride. The salt and pepper containers are small spice containers with a piece of electrical tape holding them together. You screw off the pepper to get to the salt and they are both handy at all times.

 

      This next one I am very proud of. We needed an easy way to carry small amounts of flour, rice, sugar, hot cocoa mix, rock salt (for the ice cream ball), pancake mix and tea bags. I was making some lemonade for my niece one day and thought they would make perfect containers for the motor home. I found that the name brand (Country Time and Kool Aid) containers work the best. The container the tea bags are in (middle of the top row) a generic brand and they don't seal as good. You do have to clean them really well then put baking soda in it for a few days and wash it really good again. You don't want your flour and pancake mix absorbing the lemonade and Kool Aid taste from the previous contents. If you can't smell the lemonade aid or Kool Aid anymore, then you're safe.

 

      This next photo isn't really an organization tip, it's more of a safety when opening the fridge door tip. You can kind of see those spring loaded dowels across every shelf in the fridge and the top shelf of the freezer (there was also one across one of the pantry cabinets). Those dowels have saved my toes and the top of my head many times. When fridge and cabinet items get moved around during the ride to camp, sometimes they rest against the door so when you open the door they come flying out. Those dowels prevent a lot of items from flying out and landing on your head or foot.

 

      You have to have your hotdog and marshmellow forks handy at all times but storing them isn't always easy. My husband came up with this idea. He got some 2 sided Velcro strips and stabled them to the wall above the bathroom and closet doors and it is the perfect spot to store the forks. The bad part is, your niece might see them and expect a fire every night you are camping so she can cook her hotdog by herself.

 

      Now for the bathroom. We have one of those tiny RV bathrooms where the entire bathroom is the shower. At the time we bought the motor home I didn't think it would be a big deal. After a few uses I realized it was kind of a pain, mostly because it is hard to juggle your soaps, the shower and make sure water doesn't get behind the shower curtain where it can leak out of the bathroom door or into the medicine cabinet. I used to put the soaps in the sink but the curtain pulls across the sink so it protects the medicine cabinet. For this year we added the shower caddy basket that you usually hang on your shower head in your house. (Does anybody else have a Flammable Gas sign hanging on the inside of their RV bathroom door?)

 

      Here is a closeup look of the shower basket hanging on the bathroom wall. We used the 3M Command hooks again (Those are great for use in RVs).

 

      Here is everything loaded in the shower basket. There's enough room if we have any guest campers with us, they can put their shower items in the basket, too. I can't wait to try the basket out. Even when the day comes that we upgrade our motor home to something a little bigger with the "dry toilet" bathroom (meaning the toilet isn't in the shower), this basket will still come in handy because everything stays in it really nice while you are driving down the road.

 

     I am always looking for ideas on how to organize our RV so if you have any ideas (especially if it has anything to do with organizing that closet) please email them to GirlsInTheOutdoors@yahoo.com.

Celebrate Our 1 Year Anniversary The ENTIRE Month Of April!

Help us celebrate our 1 year anniversary! Traditionaly the 1 year wedding anniversary is the "paper" anniversary so we decided to have a Paper GITO anniversary! There are LOTS of ways to win some Girls In The Outdoors paper stickers or some Girls In The Outdoors paper beaded jewelry.
     Let's start with the month long contests.
#1 What is the funniest or weirdest thing you have ever caught on the end of a fishing pole? Email pictures (girlsintheoutdoors@yahoo.com) or share them on facebook of the weirdest or funniest thing you have ever caught on your fishing pole.



The first catch from our first outing on our boat my husbnad caught a float tube flipper.

#2 Share your funny camping, fishing, hunting, rock crawling, hiking, biking, atving and other outdoors stories. Email them or share them on Facebook. If you have pictures, send those, too.

 



My husband in a mudhole that was deeper than he though it was and then got stuck on a huge log that was hiding in the mudhole.

#3 Send us funny outdoor themed photos of your pets. We have 2 dogs that love to go on outdoor adventures with us. If for some reason my girls can't go with us, I miss them a lot. I think it is harder to ride my ATV without my dacshund hanging off the front and it's hard to sleep at night without my protective lab in the tent or motor home with us. We have a lot of funny pictures of our girls and even more funny stories about them.

 

Lady Kaos getting ready for pheasant season.

#4 Share our Facebook and Twitter pages with your friends & tell them to let us know you sent them. If they let us know you sent them, they can be entered to win prizes and you will be entered 1 time for every friends that says you sent them. We aren't trying to get a high number of likes or followers, we just want to share our pages, blog and information with as many people as we can that will enjoy our information, pictures and stories.

Gunnar is in charge of keeping track of likes and followers.

 

There will be trivia and other contests throughout the entire month of April so be sure to check Facebook (Girls In The Outdoors), Twitter (@GirlsInOutdoors) and the blog for details on those. We might come up with even more ways to win some paper anniversary gifts!

 

 For the entire month of April you will also save 25% in our Etsy Shop http://www.etsy.com/shop/girlsintheoutdoors by using the coupon code GITO1YRANNIV.

 

 

I Am Prepared For Almost Anything!

     I have talked about my day bag in several posts now so I thought I would share with you what the contents are and how I adapt it to what we are doing that particular day. I am always adding new items to my day bag that we discover we need for emergencies or just to have. When we go hiking or hunting, there are more survival type items in my bag that I will go over in another post. This post is more of my every-day-day-trip bag.

      The bag part of my day bag is the first part that is adapted, depending on what we are doing. The bag on the left is a large fanny pack that my husband used to use for hunting. Now, it is used as a day bag for the ATV. The bag fits in my ATV trunk very nicely and keeps everything in one place instead of all over the bottom of my ATV trunk. The bag on the right is a backpack I use for most of our day trips. It has a lot of pockets and holds all of the contents you'll see below and also a Plano box or 2 with fishing lures. It also has comfortable straps so I can carry it on my back for a long walk comfortably. (No, you can't go to a Napa store and buy this bag. You have to know the Napa Man to get one.)

 

     There are a lot of items in my day bag and you will see I use a lot of Ziploc baggies to protect them and keep them organized. The face wipes and the toilet paper roll in the Ziploc bag go in the ATV bag. The face wipes were added this past summer for long days on the trails riding behind my husband's ATV. The toilet paper in the Ziploc bag is for easy access because there are hardly ever public restrooms on a trail. The toilet paper in the food saver baggie (it's the flat thing the tp in the Ziploc is on) is for the big bag because that one usually gets used when we are near bathrooms, but it is always good to have toilet paper for emergencies. The Kleenex in the baggie also goes in the big bag. We just use the toilet paper on the ATV trips, but we aren't going to open the food saver bag just to blow our nose. We also carry a Lightload Towel (1 in the ATV bag and 2 in the bigger bag) just in case we need a little heavier towel for something.

     I am kind of afraid of the dark. If it's a nice quiet night with nothing moving around I'm fine. BUT, if I hear something moving around in the darkness, I'm not having fun. To help with this, I carry a LOT of lights. The smaller flashlight goes in the ATV bag and all of the other's are in the big bag. I carry a little bit bigger flashlight, the blue lamp/flashlight, there are actually 2 hat clip lights in my bag and then my really awesome head lamp from Coleman. If you go night fishing with me, it can get bright in a hurry if needed.

 

     This is what happens when you go through your day bags which she knows usually means she is either getting left at home or going to have fun soon.

 

      I always have plenty of sunscreen with us. We each have sunscreen in our tackle bags plus what I carry in my day bag. Just because we have the sunscreen, doesn't mean we remember to use it though. Bug spray is another one we have with us at all times, but I always remember to use it (bugs are another thing that can ruin my day). I also bring a small tube of lotion which I don't use while fishing because I don't want the scent on my bait. After putting my hands in the water and dirt all day, tying fishing line and messing with worms and other bait all day, I really want some lotion.

     I also carry a lot of tools. The multi-tool and pen-screwdriver stay in the big bag because we carry plenty of tools on the ATVs. I also don't carry the umbrella and hand fan on the ATV because we carry rain gear and the breeze while riding cools me off. I get hot really easy and then I get sick so I try to stay as cool as I can and the handheld fan helps this. The binoculars and pocket knife are handy on any day trip.

 

          I use the bags bed sheets come in for a lot of things. I like the ones with zippers better, but I haven't had one of those for a long time. This smaller size one is great to keep my braces in.

     I can fit my knee brace, big wrist brace, 2 small wrist braces (not pictured because I forgot to put them away after the last time I used them and now I'm not sure where they are), large ankle brace and 2 smaller size ankle braces all in this smaller sized sheet bag. I have been known to fall on a flat, straight path with nothing to trip over so I keep all of these close on any day trip.

 

     This is my all-stuff-little bag. This bag is easy to transfer from one day bag to the other. I used to have one this size with a zipper but the side ripped out of it (that was a very sad day). This bag will do until it's time to buy sheets again.

 

 

     The main part of the small-stuff bag and the part that stays VERY easy to get to is the bee sting supplies because most of my family is allergic to wasp & bee stings. I have the bite & sting kit (also good for snake bites), lots of band aids, Benadryl and meat tenderizer. The meat tenderizer is in that long food saver bag on the right. I'll have to do a post on how to seal a powder in a food saver bag.

 

     I also carry hand warmers, Wet Ones, an Ace bandage and ear plugs.

     Even though we usually have the spray bug spray with us, I usually have the Off towelettes and some bug bracelets just in case. I also have antibiotic cream (Neosporin), more band aids, Hydrocortisone cream and Zanfel cream. Zanfel cream is kind of expensive, but if anybody in our group ever gets into some poison ivy they will LOVE me.

     I also carry a whistle (this one has a compass on the end, a string to carry it around your neck and the compass end screws off for a small storage space), a can opener, nail clippers, empty Ziploc bags and the makeup compact is carried for the mirror not the makeup. It is good to have a mirror for signaling and also fixing a stubborn contact lens and seeing if the bug you hit while riding the ATV made you bleed or left his guts on your face (yuck!). I also had a spare emergency survival blanket so I threw it in the bag.

 

     I have some OTC medicine in my bag, too. In the green squirt bottle I have aloe gel mixed with some water (so it will squirt) for burns, hand sanitizer (for helping clean hands during a fishing trip or ATV trip at lunch time, this foaming style is very nice for this), eye drops (contact lens wearers usually carry these), pain medicines, Pepto pills, Tums and allergy medicine. I don't want a headache, muscle cramps, tummy troubles or allergies to get in my way during any fun trip. We also added the toothpick/flossers last summer when we kept getting beef jerky stuck in our teeth. I also carry a mini Tide To Go Pen because I kept staining some of my favorite fishing shirts. The pen doesn't take up much room and since I started carrying it, I haven't had to use it much.

     I also carry plenty of Girls In The Outdoors stickers to hand out to people, because everyone needs one of those!

 

 

     I will share more trip specific items in later posts. If I find something else to add to the every-day-day bag, I will also share that. What to you carry in your day bag that I should have?

Spring Cleaning

     This weekend we did some spring cleaning and went to buy our fishing license for 2013. The motor home has it's new custom spare tire cover put on and the new hitch cover put in (see the boat propeller?). Some other little things were done outside and next weekend, the inside will be cleaned and some stuff will be loaded back in. I can't wait!! I hate the day the motor home gets winterized and I get very excited when it's time to un-winterize.

 

 

      I also went through all my tackle and started going through my day bags. I put away all my new lures I bought on the last Bass Pro trip and got for Valentine's Day. I also cut old line off of weights and hooks, added hook bonnets to lures that were missing theirs, cleaned off dirt that was left on from last summer, organized a little bit and threw away broken bobbers and disfigured hooks. I didn't get very far on the day bags, maybe that will be good one to do a post about.

     I got distracted when the Girls In The Outdoors stickers arrived! I can't wait to start handing them out!

     I had to get up to stretch my legs and when I came back I laughed at what I saw. Can you tell where I was sitting? My "helper" dropped her ball there because she knew I would throw it out of my spot when I came back (she has a fetching addiction).

     Did anybody else get any fun spring cleaning done this weekend?

Paper Bead Jewelry

     I promised to tell you about my paper bead jewelry and then I got busy. Sorry! I've been planning our 1 year anniversary celebration next month.

      The paper beads may not look like outdoor themed jewlery, but they really are. If you look close you can see words, parts of photos and some prices. That is because the beads are made out of old regulations books and newsletters, catalogs and sale flyers from sporting goods stores.

      I've made necklaces and bracelets so far and I will be making earrings out of them soon.

     I also have different colors. Some of the beads I use the color of the pictures, but sometimes I add color. Regulation books have a lot of just newsprint pages and those work great for adding color to(usually with markers).

      I also add some glass beads for accent and to seperate the paper beads. Each bead is unique in color, size and shape because they are handmade. The beads are water resistant, but not water proof - which means don't go swimming in them but it's okay if a fish splashes a little water on them.

    
     Check out all Girls In The Outdoors' jewelry at: http://www.etsy.com/shop/girlsintheoutdoors. During our 1 year anniversary celebration you will be able to win some of the paper bead jewlery and also save 25% on everything listed in our Etsy store! The celebration sale begins April 1st and runs the entire month of April.