This goes down as technically my first hang and definitely my wife's first hang. We spent a nice four day weekend in Michigan's Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness just outside of Ludington MI. By the time we got done gathering gear and sort of waiting for the Fed EX guy to show up with the final bits of our suspension system we were a bit late getting to the trailhead, but we made it before dark.
Its not a very long hike from the trailhead to Lake Michigan and some nice areas to set up shop. We found a nice place and let the fun begin. I had only finished my wife's hammock the day before and hadn't even hung it yet so the fiddle factor was rather high. Thanks to Grizzlyadams great video on suspension I was able to take my straps and cut them in half and use that half on the other hammock. So we ended up with about 5.5' of webbing and 8' of amsteel on each end of the hammock I also only had one "real" tarp so we picked up a heavy poly tarp and I still had to cut lines for that etc. so getting camp together was a bit slow go'n.
We are using double layer DIY hammocks loosely based on the Z-hammock and thanks to Warbonnetguy/Brandon we had bug nets to put around them. Big thanks to Brandon for such excellent service, I made some last minute orders and he really came through.
We had four straight days of gorgeous weather and once I put the Reflectix wings on our pads we slept like it was our job! My wife is a total believer in the hammock now!
We just base camped and day hiked and relaxed in general. Steam baked some delicious carmel brownies on my homemade double wall wood stove made from a pint can and a soup can. I like the wood stoves cuz there's no worry of running out of fuel.
Long story short Nordhouse Dunes is one of my favorite places to go, especially when I'm trying something new, its my backpacking "proving grounds". Its only about 3 hrs away, its beautiful and a great place to hang.
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