<Waves hand> Oh! Oh! We know! Pick Us!
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Other than that? We don’t know. Ice cream on a hot day? Possibly. To answer our own question.
Camping on the cheap? Well, there’s an idea with legs. It’s also something we absolutely love. Having a wonderful time in nature, the great outdoors? Unbelievable.
The image above is a wonderful free camping spot at Kisakihama Beach in Miyazaki, Japan. The image on the right is from another free camping site – Kawanaka National Park outside of Aya, Miyazaki Prefecture. We love that one, too.
Actually, that’s a large part of what we aim to do here at Lone Loon Song. We love squeezing the most juice out of this camping thing with the least amount of money and effort and sharing that with our readers. You see, being frugal while living large in the great outdoors is kind of our thing.
We were Cub Scouts, but never Boy Scouts. Oddly enough, a lot of what we learned as Cub Scouts has informed the way we in which we enjoy the outdoors. That didn’t really occur to us until recently. Seriously. Check it out:
Boy Scout Law
A Scout is:
- Trustworthy,
- Loyal,
- Helpful,
- Friendly,
- Courteous,
- Kind,
- Obedient,
- Cheerful,
- Thrifty,
- Brave,
- Clean,
- and Reverent.
Isn’t that interesting? Their motto is “Be Prepared” which we have always found to be super useful. Count us in the It’s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it, camp. (Hah! See what we did there? Camp?)
We might just add resourceful, and curious. We struggle a bit with reverent – in the strictest sense of the word – but we’re spiritual if that counts. Ironically, we spent several wonderful childhood summers at Church Camp. We enjoyed that more for the freedom, girls, being outdoors after dark and the campfires than the praying, though, if we’re being honest. And we’re nothing if not honest.
We’re curious as all get out. We always have been. We read Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone and it stuck with us. The importance of community.
We want to share all the useful stuff we have learned with our readers. Recently we have become interested in Solar Energy, portable power stations, and photography and its peripheries. We also have a huge interest in publishing technology of all kinds – everything from this blog to a YouTube channel. (We have one, but currently, it’s mostly rock and roll videos.) So we’re also interested in media and music. We’re having a great time. Join us, won’t you?
We’d Love To Go Camping, But We Don’t Want To Spend Too Much Money
Yeah. We feel you on that one. The big obstacle for us is a not uncommon one: A lack of simoleons. Cash. Moolah. Scratch. Pesos. Bucks. Resources. We can go on.
We can’t help you with that. But we have a lot of ideas about being resourceful. That’s what we can do. We can help you with some ideas to make your resources go further. Perhaps, we can even help you remove any resistance you may be experiencing to Get Out There™ and go camping.
However, here’s a not so Fun Fact: You have to spend some money if you want to do damn near anything, and getting involved in any facet of camping is no different.
Take, for example, photography. Even if it’s a smartphone. Therefore, the virtue of thriftiness is a big one for us. A simple example: In our article Tips and Tricks for Happy Campers we have a tip for saving money by not buying ice for the cooler. We just take bottles of water – or soups or stews – for that matter – and freeze it. Now it’s ice. Until, of course, it’s water or dinner, respectively. This chili pictured below, for example, was cooling down our beer up until twenty minutes before we took this shot.
It’s a small thing, to be sure, but that’s a few beers or guitar strings, or batteries for your flashlight. We believe that having a wonderful experience in the great outdoors and getting great value are not mutually exclusive. We want to share our insights so that everyone can get their Serotonin on. (See our prized article on The Benefits Of Camping.)
See, our big thing is to be useful to our friends. We have tips on everything from preparing food and where to pitch your tent to starting a fire when it’s wet or taking great photos and camera advice. We publish new articles every week that we think we’d find useful if we were in your shoes. See our Posts page for our latest articles.
What we aim to do is to write about camping and the outdoors with Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
Let’s put some meat on those bones:
What we aim to do here at Lone Loon Song, is to encourage and inspire everyone to grab their friends and family, their camping gear and “Get Out There!™” Why not have yourselves a time?
We heartily recommend that you go camping. We have never regretted it. We once got caught in a typhoon on Ebino Plateau. Believe it or not, it wasn’t all that much fun at the time. We got a good story out of it, though. (No photographs survive – which is sort of why we got all excited about How to Get the Best Camping or Outdoor Photographs On a Budget of $0.00 – You won’t want to miss that one. Don’t be like us, get the photos. It goes to credibility. Just kidding. But it never hurts to preserve your adventures. You might as well. Have you got a smartphone? Have you got a dry bag for it? You’re good to go.)
We once saw a huge bear at Long Beach on Vancouver Island. True story. Ask Dianne and Mike. Unfortunately, you have to. This was in the early 1990’s and we had resisted buying a portable phone. We could have bought a disposable film camera, but that was such a pain in the uh… neck. (Long story short, no photos survive. It’s mighty questionable if we would have gotten any in any event – oddly enough, we didn’t really feel the need to stick around. We experienced a powerful feeling to get the hell out of that vicinity. Give direction to a giant brown bear? “Smoky! Baby! May I call you Smoky? Pout, baby, pout. Project. Think about what we’re selling here.” Uh, no.)
Nevertheless, the fact remains that we hung out the rest of the weekend. But we made sure to make a lot of noise and a big fire, though. We were lucky that it was also salmon season, so he – she? – was a lot more interested in the sushi than us.)
The point is, we dined out on stories like that for years. So, long story short, we love the outdoors. All of it. The good, the bad, and a mix of the two. We reckon it’s a package deal. The smells, the sounds, the beer, the feeling of sleeping and waking up in a tent. The singing, the guitars and shakers. The sound of waves crashing on the beach, the wind in the trees, or the river bubbling by. Call us crazy. Take a number. They don’t call us “Loons” for nothing.
Helping You To Get The Maximum Camping Experience For The Least Investment of Effort and Hard-Earned Cash:
We’ve decided that we are going to focus on helping people get the best possible camping experience for the least possible investment in terms of both cash and effort.
Don’t get us wrong. We love cheap solutions, but only cheap solutions that work better than the more costly alternatives. Sound too good to be true?
Permit us to illustrate our philosophy with just a few useful examples off the tops of our heads:
- Don’t buy ice. We told you this before, but it bears (hah!) repeating. Get a 2-litre (Yeah, that’s how you spell it, we’re Canadians) plastic bottle of drinking water. (We just filter ours from the tap.) Put it in the freezer, and wait a couple of days. Walla – Ice until you need drinking water. We have dozens of tips and tricks like this in our article: Camping Tips and Tricks. There’s something for everyone!
- Use a Tuning Fork to tune your musical instruments instead of battery-powered electronic tuners or a phone app when camping. (Tuners’re cheap, work great, eco-friendly – nary a battery involved – never run out of juice, and are just cool. Save your iPhone for photos or emergencies. Think about this: Spend the money you saved on guitar strings, a new harmonica or beer, or whatever, and train your ear while you’re doing it! Sounds like a win-win deal to us.)
- Use The Can Trick instead of an electronic or otherwise (expensive) gadget to ensure that your solar panel is pointed directly at the sun. It works, and you’re likely to eat the contents eventually. ( Not the panel, the can. We don’t know who needs to hear that, but better to be safe. Just remember to pack it out – leave no trace. The can. Don’t be that guy. We just got back from a two day excursion where we spent a good 45 minutes filling a large trash bag with someone else’ trash. It wasn’t a complete waste of time, we note with sarcasm. We found that we remembered and muttered several choice words we had been under-utilizing.)
- Don’t buy a glass guitar slide at the music store. They’ll hold you up from anywhere from ¥2000 or so to damn near ¥4000. (That’s about $20 to $40 CDN) What you do is you buy a salt shaker (pictured at left) from Nitori Home Centre instead for ¥415. (About $4.15 CDN). You get a much better tone and the damn thing’s unbreakable. (Although we lost one in the dark last weekend. UPDATE – It turned up in the bottom of our backpack! Still, we bought 4 over the years, but they are still just sitting in the studio. You’d be surprised how happy finding that made us.)
- Use cheap coffee filters from the ¥100 shop and a coffee drip instead of custom coffee presses. As long as you have quality coffee, your coffee’s gonna be good.
- Get a ¥100 flashlight at the ¥100 shop. (Or the loonie store in Canada.) Church. Our ¥100 flashlight has been working great for over 10 years. (Knock wood) Going out to Kawagata River tomorrow. (BTW, do not buy bar-b-cue lighters at the ¥100 shop. They suck. We used ours twice and it gave up the ghost. Twice as in two fires. Two clicks. What a piece of junk. Get one at the supermarket or the convenience store.)
This sharing of what we’ve learned because we sincerely want to be helpful. Isn’t that what you do for your friends? Of course, you do. That’s just the way we’re wired. (Not just us, people in general.) Who wouldn’t want to turn our friends on to a good thing? Save ’em a few bucks? Or steer ’em away from junk? Because that’s what people do for their friends. “(Later on, we’ll tell you a true story about helping a friend buy a slide – or a salt shaker like the one on the left, above – for their guitar.) Here’s an example: We always tell people : “Get a tuning fork instead of an electronic tuner for camping”, for example. (Gigs are a horse of a different colour.) Paying customers deserve not to hear you tune up.)
“Do this, get a better result and save a few bucks.”
So, when the opportunity presents itself, we offer up our thoughts. We’d be pretty surprised if you didn’t do this too, whenever your friend asks you for advice about a piece of gear, or whatever. You just do, right? If you know, why not help someone?
We’ve come to realize that’s our Lone Loon Song mission statement:
“We aim to help people get the most out of their camping adventure for the least possible investment in both cash and effort. The maximum benefit for the least output.”
It’s taken a while, but yeah. That sounds about right.
If we can help our friends save a few bucks, have a great time, and get their Serotonin on, we’d be mighty pleased. Delighted in fact. (Speaking of Serotonin, we have an article on The Benefits of Camping of which we are unjustifiably proud.)
Therefore, over the years, and there have been many, ( Don’t ask, but we turned 60 in 2024, and we’ve been camping since we were 9, so you can do the math) and as a result we’ve learned a thing or two about camping and being in the great outdoors. As a result, we decided to share this with our readers.
God love us, That will have to do.
If you think this might hold some value for you, then we’re mighty glad to welcome you to our space. So, Welcome, Bienvenue, Irrashaimase. Pull up a camping chair, help yourself to a cold beverage, and take a load off. (Feel free to pick up a guitar, too, if you’re so inclined. Feel free to throw in a harmony.)
| We test and review outdoor stuff. This is all either stuff we like or not. We intend to be as honest with you as possible because we want to be useful and earn your trust. If you purchase something through our links, we’d be honoured, but please know that we will earn a commission, at no cost to you. |
“A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.“
ALEXANDER POPE
Here are some of our articles that we hope you might find useful:
- Camping on the Cheap
- The benefits of camping
- Our Checklist for beginners
- 9 Easy Tips for Comfortable Camping
- Our Latest Blog Posts
Lone Loon Song is an organic thing, not static. If you like it, tell your friends! If you are an experienced camper and we got it wrong, tell us! We try to post new articles every week, we don’t use AI, so that’s just how long it takes. We take our own photos, edit them, and write our own articles. This takes Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
Thanks for being here, and we hope to see you again soon!
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