Laura Learns to Camp, Part 1

Laura's and my children together attend a church program for kids. We recently celebrated our last session of the year. To celebrate, we had a picnic on the beach. We had previously mulled over the food possibilities for this. Cooking presented a challenge. Laura had a camp stove, but she did not know how to use it. She thought perhaps it would be easier to visit the 7-11 across the street. Pshaw, I said. We can figure out the camp stove!

After work, before the event, I went to the grocery store to pick up my portion of the meal - fruit. I found a great hotdog deal and texted Laura to inquire if she needed any. No, she said, because she didn't get her planned camp stove lesson from her husband, so she was just going to go to 7-11. Nope, nada, no way, I replied. A series of blog posts featuring Laura attempting camping hacks was the initial inspiration for this blog. It was the perfect opportunity to begin Laura Learns to Camp. So reluctantly, she packed up the trusty camp stove and I picked up the wieners and buns we needed (teehee! I said wieners and buns!). Then we met at the beach.

We do generally feel very fortunate to live about three minutes from this spot.

Laura investigates the equipment and successfully opens the case.
We all observed that the camp stove looks like a fancy projector!

Yay, I opened it!

"This looks like something," Laura says, as she attaches the
propane pipe thingy.

We all query if there is actually any propane in that container.

Some time later, Laura decided the propane tank probably wasn't
meant to stick straight up like that.

Maybe this knob does something?

Thwarted! Turns out the starter button was malfunctioning.
Fortunately, Val's husband was able to produce a barbecue lighter
from the trunk of his car.

This photo doesn't illustrate much other than how not to focus
an iphone camera, but Laura successfully lit the stove!

Umm... there seems to be some fire. Is that normal?

No, no it's not.

In Laura's defense, at this point there were three experienced campers watching her set up the camp stove and not one of us realized that the flaming thing was a) the drip tray, meant to go UNDER the stove and b) made of plastic, and not meant to be kept close to a very high heat source or open flame. The photo is deceptive. The smoke was thick and black, not grey. The child in the background is retrieving water to douse this fire. Tongs (good job, Laura, on your forethought to bring tongs!) were used to transfer the flaming piece of black sludge to the sand, where we used our advanced knowledge to bury it in sand to put out the fire.

Camping 101: Learn to improvise.

That'll work.

In the end, we had cooked hotdogs, which was the ultimate goal, so I still call Laura's first camping lesson a success. Her husband, the purchaser, owner, and user of the camp stove, disagrees.

Apparently that was a really important drip tray.
"It just drips grease everywhere now," he says.

He has no defense. He was supposed to give Laura a lesson and didn't.

EDIT:  Nope, it was me (Laura) who was all, "I don't want to deal with the camp stove. I will just go buy overpriced 7-11 hot dogs."  So it's my fault, not Chris's.

Poor drip tray.