What is better than camping?

<Waves hand> Oh! Oh! We know! Pick Us!

A 100% A.I.-free blog! Written by almost normal human beings, not unlike yourself! Lone Loon Song is now, and always has been 100% human-produced. Thanks for finding us. We know a lot of useful stuff about getting outdoors camping.

How Can I Beat This Depression? Go Camping!

We hear you. We haven’t got any psychology, but everytime we start to get that “The walls are closing in!” feeling, we apply a heaping helping of the old serotonin. This article on the benefits of camping is as close as we get to book-learning, but it sure seems to work for us. Even going for a walk in the park is better than nothing. Seriously, we aren’t built for this. Consider how our ancestors lived. Give it whirl. We hope it’ll work for you.

We know a lot of useful stuff for doing so while getting the best possible experience while spending the least possible amount of money and effort. Maximum enjoyment – minimum expense and effort. If that sounds like something that you might be interested in, welcome.

No A.I. (Because A.I.’s just aren’t all that interested in camping – and they can’t cook for sh*t.)

Does anyone really need more… uh… mediocre (a mighty kind word, but that’s how we roll) content produced more quickly? We think not. No. We’re certain.

Therefore we don’t use A.I. for anything. There’s plenty of that on the internet. If that’s your thing, go ahead and back out of here now. This is not for you. This is strictly an E.E.A.T. blog. (Google that, if you don’t know what it is.)

Conversely, if we don’t know something, we’ll own it. We’ll admit it. If we’re wrong, tell us. We’ll accept that with grace, and publish a correction. We feel like it’s better to have the correct information out there than to be “right”. That one thing ought to save us all a lot of time. Our friend Kevin often says: “It’s tough to say, not knowing.”

We have always appreciated the frankness of that. So that’s our promise to you the reader. If we don’t know about it, we won’t talk about it. We’ve been through stupid arguments, and frankly, we’d rather just know what works, and what doesn’t. We promise.

On the other hand, one thing we’ve always been good at is research. Recently, we’ve been all over this photography thing. It does not have to be expensive. It turns out that you can get wonderful cameras for next to nothing. We’ll teach you how to go about that, too. Because photographs is a kind of meditation, just like music is. Like building a campfire is. So stay tuned for that. But we won’t write about anything unless we feel like we know enough to really help our readers. To really solve their problems, or at least let you all know that you’re not alone. We’ve all had a tough half a decade or so, and there’s no shame in admitting it.

Because you’re glad you’re here. If we can help you to solve a problem, answer your question, or you simply enjoy what we do, please tell your friends. We’d appreciate it.

The Lone Loon Song Philosophy:

If we can save our readers a little money and enhance your outdoor experience, well, heck! That would be great.That’s our raison d’etre. Well, that and a need for beer money. But here’s the thing, and it’s very simple:

We want you to find this content useful, and valuable.
We want you to have the best camping and outdoor experience possible for the least amount of money.
We intend to earn your trust – because we have the expertise, experience, authority and trust. (E.E.A.T. is how Google puts it.)
We also want you to have a good time. It’s not just trust. We want you to get to know, and like us, too. We have been accused of being loquacious – and we’re guilty. At the same time, we realize that most of our readers have a particular problem that needs solving now. So we’ve tried to thread that needle by including tables of contents through this blog. This is intended to help you can find what you need quickly to scratch what’s itching you.
We’re still gonna flap our gums. Here’s the thing:

We’ve written articles on all kinds of good stuff. They are all collected and you can always follow the link to Posts. A link should always appear in the header of every post or page. Our latest posts appear first, but there’s a lot of good stuff there, if we do say so ourselves.

That’s because although there is a lot of good information on The Internet, it’s not always easy to find. Additionally, there is a lot of information that doesn’t quite meet that description. A great many folks today don’t have (or take) the time to search out the good stuff. Lord knows we know what a chore it is to separate the wheat from the chaff. That’s where we come in. We can do that. AAMOF, we do that because we have our own fish to fry, so to speak.

(BTW – AAMOF =”As a matter of fact” – we came of age with Usenet news newsgroups – so we still use all of that shortcut stuff. If you don’t understand a collection of letters, take a minute to Google it.)

The Lone Loon Song Mission:

Our mission at Lone Loon Song is to provide our readers with the information necessary to make good decisions for themselves. We can’t sit here and pretend we can tell you what is right for you. We don’t know what you need, like, or want, so that would be dumb. Which is something we’d like to avoid.

That would be the height of arrogance. However, what we can do is talk a little about what we have found, why it’s been good and useful for us, and stuff that failed to impress us – and perhaps more importantly – why, and why we care.

Right. Back to the question. What’s better than camping?

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. It’s good for you. Get your serotonin on! Paying nothing for a great campsite? Priceless. (With apologies to the old Mastercard campaign.)

The image at the top of this page is a wonderful free camping spot at Kisakihama Beach in Miyazaki, Japan. It’s not really a camping spot at all, but it has toilets, showers (cold), and come nightfall, the surfers are all gone and nobody pesters you. The surfers start up again at first light, though, so don’t stay up all night. Or, grab your board and get some waves. That’s guaranteed to clear your head in a hurry.

The image on the above right is from another free camping site – Kawanaka National Park outside of Aya, Miyazaki Prefecture. We love that one, too. (You can sleep in if you want – there is often nobody there – and the swimming is outstanding, but usually so cold that first plunge will take your breath away. You’ll get used to it pretty quick.)

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 also have an article on Tips and tricks for a smooth camping experience that we have accumulated over a lifetime of camping on three continents in all kinds of weather conditions.

We may have mentioned that we have an anti A.I. thing. Do you really need more mediocre content? Who was calling for that? So we do our best to publish an article every week – sometimes it’s more, sometimes one article should really be broken down into two or three articles – so it may take longer – but we’ll get something out there. We could, of course, pound out a lot of crap every day with A.I. like everyone who has a blog suggests, but none of the people we encounter who are looking to solve a problem are asking for that.

Call us crazy, but we decided against that.

Or, you could try spending too much scratch on a hotel in an expensive town in Karuizawa, in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. We had a great time. Thanks for your support.

Just kidding. We are independently wealthy. Now you’re thinking, “kidding about what?”

Well, don’t knock it ’til you try it. But that’s not really our thing. Still, we got some interesting photographs and it was kind of fun to see how the other half lives. (It’s interesting to see English table settings in a Formal Japanese Hotel. We thought we had a picture, but we’ll see…)

(Left – The Otawa Hotel in Karuizawa, Japan, Nagano Prefecture. Shot with our cheap Olympus 1050 with a CCD sensor. Our only option was a jpeg, and there wasn’t much to be done with that. We don’t recommend cheap cameras, but we bought it in 2009 – we didn’t do enough research, and now we’re stuck with it. It’s all right, it just pisses us off that we didn’t spend a little more time researching and getting something a little more pricy, but a much better value. That’s why this blog exists.

We’ve made a lot of mistakes, learned from them, and hope to pass them along to our readers.

We’re all about the outdoors, but our better half is not above a little luxury from time to time.

Unfortunately, in Karuizawa, not a damn thing is cheap. We bought a teriyaki chicken sandwich for $9.50, and an $8.00 craft beer for lunch. It was mighty tasty, in all fairness. Bought a $10.00 beer at dinner. It tasted about the same as the same one I had for $4.00 from the vending machine. Don’t do that! Go camping! Save yourself some Simoleons! Get Out There™; it’s so much cheaper, and there’s no dress code. And, as long as no one else is there – see Kawanaka campsite – you can play music all night, too!)

Bonus fun fact, no charge:

“Why was money called Simoleons, and why the heck do you loons use it so much?”

First answer first:

First appearing in U.S. slang around 1896, referring to a dollar. There’s a NOLA connection. French currency still had some sway with the Gendarmes, apparently. Down in the quarter. Some folks believe that ‘Simoleon’ and the ‘Napoleon’, a French coin worth 20 francs issued by Napoleon Bonaparte in the early 1800s – are connected. A reference is also made to the ‘simon’, British slang for sixpence, in the 17th century. Either way, it’s a good tale.

Second:

We like words. We first heard of that one in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, a groundbreaking film. You’ve got to see it!

You’re welcome.

Ahem.

We were Cub Scouts as kids, 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. We’re not interested in the whole armed youth thing, but there’s a lot in there that is pretty good. (Just throw out the Hitler Youth Stuff.)

At any rate, that didn’t really occur to us until recently. Seriously. Check it out:

Boy Scout Law: Okay, weird, but there’s something there.

A Scout is:

Trustworthy,
Loyal,
Helpful,
Friendly,
Courteous,
Kind,
Obedient,
Cheerful,
Thrifty,
Brave,
Clean,
and Reverent.

Isn’t that interesting? That’s not a bad thing. 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, the 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. So, this is a kind of community. Tell your friends.

We want to share all the useful stuff we have learned with our readers. Recently we have become interested in Solar Panels, 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 whatever your resources are go farther. Perhaps, we can even help you remove any resistance you may be experiencing to Get Out There™ and go camping. That would give us a great deal of pleasure.

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? (Oh, Dude, you need a dry bag. Get one and 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. Much more like, “Leeeee –eeets juuu-uuust go back to the campsite and build a huge fire. Nice Smoky. Go… go get yourself some fish a la carte, brother. Salmon are running, Dude!”)

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 filtre 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. That’s important to us.
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. (Knockwood) Going out to Kawanaka 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. It might have been a little damp, but still. Unacceptable. Get one at the supermarket or the convenience store.)

Conclusion:

This is us 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 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:

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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