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Solar Eclipse Camping | Shawnee National Forest in 4K

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All of the musical compositions or arrangements and footage in this video are original, and were composed, recorded, and captured by Andrew Lin, Bryan Lin, Robby Huang, and Thomas Sinard

Featuring drums by Nate Laguzza

Original content and music is copyright Adventure Archives (c) 2017

Tags: bushcraft,backpacking,hiking,camping,wilderness,survival,outdoors,travel,outdoor recreation,prepping,nature,4k,wild,survival skills,ray mears,les stroud

Video Transcription

[Music]

[Music]

before things went wrong our trip to Shawnee National Forest began like every other adventure we had been on long stretches of highway through rural America past green fields and trees we arrived at the trailhead and reviewed the plan we were hoping to hike up to the shores of Cedar Lake to camp and have a good view of the sky for the upcoming solar eclipse the trail first took us through a power line cut in the woods which is kind of a unique start to the adventure the power lines in the clearings stretched into the horizon here primary succession was taking place and familiar meadow plants grew you check this up this is something that I've actually never really seen while we're camping but I always see it when I'm like hiking along back bike trails and stuff and clearly we're seeing it here because this is more of like a sort of civilized environment this is pokeweed and it's actually a toxic plant but if you take these green leaves before they have any red on them and you boil them most people say three times and drain the water each time then you create something that's called poke salad which people have considered like sort of a depression-era food that a lot of people in poverty would eat and these berries here which are really pretty those are also really toxic but you can use them to create a dye for fabric and stuff you can see they're like really colorful but the doctor just don't like it along with pokeweed we also saw several butterflies fluttering around drinking nectar from the thistles and then the path wound into the woods where cobwebs seemed to dangle from every branch still at the periphery of the forest we saw some invasive plant species like autumn olive multiflora rose and Japanese honeysuckle

[Music]

the forest was filled with hot humid air and as we hiked it felt as though we were trudging through a jungle we found some ginseng growing as well as an American Bellflower being pollinated by a bee and everywhere we walked there were cobwebs and spiders some of them were dangling off the trail where we could admire their intricate pattern from a distance but still more were built right across the trail and we found ourselves constantly getting tangled in them still as the evening lights set in the forest was filled with a wondrous Beauty man it is hot and humid but it's actually really beautiful out here in the shade it's actually not too bad it was really interesting coming in on that first stretch because it's we're kind of going through a meadow with lots of plants that are not necessarily native and you know I saw stuff like autumn olive which is a plant with idle blueberries I saw Japanese honeysuckle multiflora rose they're all plants that don't really grow here but it's like the ecosystem of the meadow sort of encroaching on the forest dialects in native plants - Thomas how does it feel to be back in the Midwest oh it's a lot greener here then my parts of Los Angeles with all this green vegetation is definitely a few more bugs but I'm living it's just fine for me right now we'll see how the night goes so already we could feel ourselves wavering under the pressure of the humidity in the heat but for every cobweb that ended up tangling in our faces there is something beautiful about the forest that kept us going we came to a stream where we saw some wildlife a cute little toad and a humongous wolf spider carrying it sexy along with terrifying things out here in the Midwestern jungle there's also really awesome things this is as I've said before my favorite tree the Papa and it's good before the season where the ripe but there's two pop-ups right here growing you know usually when they're ripe they'll fall off when you shake the tree but that doesn't happen until like maybe Oh a month or half of months from now but we've never actually seen the fruits on an episode so I'm really excited about that what's it taste like it's kind of like a blend between a mango and a banana and people I've talked to have mixed feelings about it some people like it others really don't like it I'm not sure why you wouldn't like it though it's a mango banana sounds perfect yeah no it's like awesome when you eat it before it's like perfectly ripe it's kind of like yellowish and custardy and then later it gets more orange and a little more mushy [Music]

so when it's really summery and there's lots of life teeming all over the place you have to use these sticks to get all the spider webs out of the way when we first went backpacking we called this the Deku stick which I had forgotten about the fryin and to remind me soon we came to a confusing trail down where we had to stop you find our way I'd say just keep going just cross the first Creek well there were those two drier ones though yeah where we going up there I mean we're definitely ordered right that's a trip no that's no not a trail what

no no because it the if the if that's pointing that way then why is this one playing that way I don't know good spider in your face spiders keep it g-rated please oh that's my answer to you sure we're just going that way guys this is a dead end it was one more well marks than the actual trip all right so we go back and check night is coming and there are spiders the medes dark of all times it really is that follow the dot if you look here there's a dash and then a dot and the dot is gonna point you which way to go you can tell just because we came from that way basically from the beginning ah okay moral the story this is the way at this point I am convinced at that sign that said hazardous conditions just meant that the trail is full of spiders that is hardly anyone else out on the weekend and there's all these spiders it's like we found our way and continued hiking on doing our best to avoid the cobwebs the evenings golden light gave the forest a magical feel but at the same time we came across an unsettling omen okay so this is a time where you really gotta just accept that you're gonna get some spiders on you get some spider webs and you're gonna be a little bit sweaty and uncomfortable otherwise the whole trip is gonna be miserable if I'm gonna not be okay with spiders in my apartment or my house then I gotta be okay with them out here we're in their house now yeah but spiders I'm looking at you this is message for you if you ever come in my apartment you're dead never come in my house I'll let you live I'll put you back outside so now that I'm in your house you let me live you can kill Thomas you know I got a good feeling about this next part though because like we're we're walking up into the sunlight go on high up on the hill I think this is actually a really good sign that we've spent far too long in civilization like we're like freaking out right back into the horrible jungle over there and tacoma's lair I'd be okay with camp in here I mean in the Sun setting anyway we don't know if we're gonna find anything better yeah let's do it okay well before we set anything up [Laughter]

[Music]

after clearing out our campsite of any and all spiderwebs we set up our shelters for the night the rest of us had brought tents but Andrew as usual had brought his tarp and he was now running into some problems I just brought the stick on the ground over here to you know make a shorter stick so I could sweep a bunch of the litter off the ground and as soon as I broke it in half billions of fans just spilled out of it and I just screamed and threw it over there yeah I don't know what I'm gonna do cuz all I brought was my Buddha you just wrap yourself up in [Laughter]

[Music]

right into right into Andrews court right here you say that what is it I set my tarp up in a way that would give me a bit of a psychological buffer to all the creepy crawlies then we gathered up all their things and took in our surroundings and on top of all the humidity bugs and feet we also had to put up with Thomas's infamously bad jokes you weren't allowed to make jokes above 11,000 feet you're also not allowed to make jokes I bet we've talked about this before but you know what this trip is reminiscent of laying between the lakes bugs everywhere we hiked into like this little literally a mosquito net there so we get into our tent and we don't put our rain flies on or anything the reason we don't have the rain flies on it's because me and someone else were using the tarp we plug the ends with the scrambling and we only had two two-person tent so we had five people owe me andrew friend derec all crammed into this two-person tent half wet the whole time so anyways we gave up the next morning went back to Derek's apartment you know that doesn't sound that bad right now because I wasn't there for that and I'm on a scale right now 10 is I leave I just turn around I leave and I live in Nashville right now I'm a 2 and a half 3 3 out of 10 it's it feels like it's cooling off a little bit so it's feeling a little better but not the heat spiders not just spiders it's the plethora the army of spiders that just keep falling out of nowhere I've never seen a butterfly stuck in a mosquito flapping like a haunted predator yeah literally predator there's also another way to look at this if we get through this could be gritos way of saying you get a full Eclipse now before I left I was like I'll put it with like humidity and discomfort as long as we get that solar eclipse ya know could come Monday and it could be cloudy and night fell and we headed off to our shelters it was still hot and humid and I was glad to have a breezy tarp to sleep under but I didn't feel nearly as secure from the elements as everybody else

Thomas I feel a little better now that I'm in a cocoon I think you and I need to make a thing Andrew and I are the things where we get in the tent Jose anyone out there but you and I need to have our own thing I heard you know it's gonna you know it I know you do what do we do every time in the car that's taking the airport Yellowstone Jackson Hole oh hey guys you gotta get up early in the morning Thomas [Music]

morning came and with it more heat and a cacophony of cicadas [Music]

it had been a fairly peaceful night but we were still unsure about how the weather would turn out on the day of the Eclipse and if I control the heat and the spiders would have been worth it I prepared some coffee as the others roused from their slumber [Music]

in addition to coffee I made some boat mail with some freeze-dried fruit thrown in a banana was a little chewy huh that's good

[Music]

we're on Algonquin the birds and bugs and stuff were so loud and we were sleeping in the morning and up you know a thousand that half a sleep state there's like I'm gonna scream at him and see if it gets him to stop in the morning I just suddenly scream as loud as I can at the tent and Thomas is in the tent with me there's a glue what's wrong and I go oh just trying to get the bugs to shut up so then today I'm having a dream and Thomas is on top of me crushing me and at first I'm laughing but it's one of those laughs where you can barely do any air out and then he doesn't stop I let out a scream in real life again and Thomas again is like huh what's wrong what was a crushing you in real life or the dream in the dream oh so it wasn't actually I was like I wasn't in real life we had a lot of space between us yeah whenever you're in my tent for some reason I scream heard that I was like I don't think I was even surprised I was like Robbie's at it [Music]

that'll warm you up but it's not exactly what I want right now after breakfast we packed up all of our things shaking everything off to make sure there were no bugs hitching a ride on our gear and then we headed out [Music]

well these spiders they are no joke there's people who went through this path just like 30 minutes ago and already spider webs are all over the place legitimately feels like a jungle it does sweating my face off it's the name of a hit movie from the early 90s we continued through the thick overgrown trail and all the cobwebs that dangled across it before arriving at a cool force stream beneath the water surface we spotted several small fish and a few decently sized crawdads [Music]

the path continued on but now it was even more overgrown and unmaintained I'm not too sure if this is actually the trail they've turned the corner so I couldn't see where it went there was another trail back that way so when we first entered this trail it said hazardous conditions up ahead maybe it's this area here the trail appeared to be heavily damaged or weathered away but we soon found our way again and I saw some useful plants this is a really lovely plant this is called spicebush and if you break the leaves apart and smell it it's got this really fragrant almost like fruitloop smell and this time of year the berries are just becoming right and these are pretty good season night I liken them to something kind of like black pepper it definitely smells like pepper and it's kind of like mix between black pepper and like a Sutra and peppercorn hmm it's a very piney pepper oh man it's so familiar almost like a cleaning product most taste like cleaning brush it's like a strong it almost it's like a candy like one of those spicy candies or fireballs yeah fireballs that's it yeah Oh peppermint it's like the deals I've been seeing these all around and it might look like the exact of an alien in it it almost kind of is this is a wasp goal they inject an oak tree and this horrible growth develops on it usually actually when you dissect it there's a bunch of like lines shooting out into the center and a wasp larvae will develop in there but I mean it almost looks like a fruit with like the stem here and everything but uh that was nothing but ya know it's it's it's growing an insect rather than any sort of tasty juicy fruit nature's disgusting before long we came to a much more pleasant open area with towering pine trees and up ahead I found some dyers polypore growing at the base of one of those trees the reason it's called that is because you can use it to actually create a dye for clothing and stuff looks like a pancake feels like one - it feels unbelievably like one so one thing I remembered was the distinct colors it's just got like these bands of color but it's also called velvet top fungus and I mean yeah just give it a feel it's like yeah oh you're right it does feel like a pancake - yeah and apparently it's like a fungal disease and it gives but rot to these conifer trees which makes perfect sense - this is the butt of a conifer tree that's got ivy on it - I don't you touch that tree I feel like I should have stayed back in California who you know actually that section with the pine trees is like so much cooler and a more open feeling it looks like we're gonna we're going back to the brush I really don't wish I was back in California but I will say it feels ten times hotter here than the hottest I felt in California pretty good right now I think the sweat has finally done its job a slight breeze now unlike before where it was just hours of literal stillness I've got a little breeze that actually making the sweat do its work not to be that guy but I felt good since this is like clearly not a perfectly healthy made of forest there's like a bunch of this invasive plants and meadows krit encroaching in just from the species I can tell there's like invasive plants you've got like raspberries multiflora rose American pokeweed just stuff that you wouldn't see in the woods I mean some of them are native but it's like what you'd see in a meadow but it is kind of like nostalgic cuz it's like it reminds me of exploring the backyard as a kid or something you know and even like the sounds of lawn mower sometimes it's like kind of pleasant when we went to north manitou island they were very insistent on no cleaning your boots for event like season stuff being transferred over that island yeah then you think about that island the forest was beautiful there really like didn't have it was very clean yeah that floor was really clean oh look we've got some sassafras here it's also a good one for making tea oh okay look a bit what do you think this plant is Thomas what do you think this is you want to want to give this a touch [Music]

this boxelder

and it's perfectly harmless it's actually um a tree in the maple family and it looks just like poison ivy sometimes but some of the giveaways are like each leaf with the three leaflets it's coming out on the opposite side of another leaf and with maple trees branches and leaves always come out oppositely like that and sometimes you'll find leaves that have a six leaflets instead of just three but I mean though the serrations and the pattern of it looked just like poison ivy

[Music]

Thomas

[Music]

actually got a mushroom here that I know called Whittier got a very gelatinous type feel

and it's actually edible commonly used in Asian cooking too but I think the that the texture is not appealing to everyone because it can be a little bit slimy I mentioned this the other day but this is autumn olive it's actually a plant

I think native to Japan you see they've got these leaves with like almost a glittery speckled pattern on them and their fruits also have that same pattern and these fruits are edible but they're really only good once they've traveled up like a raisin this one is very plump I'm not seeing any that are quite ready to eat well maybe this one actually so I bite into this and just really sour immediately my whole mouth dries up is really astringent but this one it's still little astringent actually it's not quite shriveled as you'd hope but there is a pit in the middle so it's like almost not worth it so the map that said this trail ran adjacent to a road I mean it really see a road clearly some sort of old gate here for a vehicle could be it could just be one in the same but I don't think you'd write anything other than a unicycle through here because of this it looks like just a bunch of dead leaves but if you look closer there's all these like almost log cabin looking patterns on it this is actually the cocoon of I think some sort of species of bag worm in our yard we've got like a bunch of these coniferous bushes like juniper bushes and there's always these like scraggly looking cocoons hanging off of it it looks like just a bunch of the needles or leaves that yeah yeah they're like all wrapped together in this cocoon shape and brown and that's the same sort of a family of insects but they were in our yard one time growing up and my mom she like plucked him off and threw him in the yard and then later she came out and there was a big line of worms going back to the truth man it was awful we also saw some tent caterpillars twitching in the nest it was a pretty unsettling sight and see this that's what nightmares are made of welcome back to the Midwest thanks Jess geez I'll take a barren mountain line any day people see it they're like oh this morning we were hearing all sorts of birds and that one it's got this sort of Peter Peter Peter that's what you know birders birders are huge murders but that's a Tufted Titmouse kinda looks like just a little gray bird but with like a cardinal style tuft at the top it's funny because bird sounds are just so like distinct and nostalgic that if you're in an area that you've grown up in or like a similar sort of environment like that sound just reminds me so much of my childhood but you go somewhere else and you hear the birds and they're pretty but it just doesn't have that same like nostalgic association with it yeah but yeah that's that's one of those distinct calls I always think of it looks like we could pump some water here does happen I just flowing up there find a good flowing spot over there give it a try okay we filled up on water but the stream offered no relief from the constant hazy eat me preface this by saying I know this is first world problems and we chose to be out here this is the hottest we've ever camped in buggiest - well I think it's probably more that then hot yeah it's like when you might move my arm around it's like I feel like I'm not moving it because it's like no it really feels like a sauna kinda we're a steam room I guess no and then you breathe and you get no feeling of air yeah I miss the colder climates this is why it's important to plan your camping trips when you have the freedom to choose what day which we did not it's not too late for the hotel you know I'm pushing for right now and that's when things like wrong we started spraying deep on our bare skin because while we were sitting around talking I suddenly noticed one two three fifteen sixteen seventeen dozens and dozens of tiny freckle sized creatures on my arms and ankles our first thought was deer ticks the Lyme disease carrying bane of all outdoor enthusiasts and we all looked and there was deer ticks all over us yeah we thought was just flecks of dirt yes we're so sweaty and everything but no these guys are small I mean they're smaller than like the pin of a needle yeah in a vote three to four three one three two one that's incredibly uncomfortable and if it weren't for the ticks I actually think we could easily keep yeah if the ticks I got to play with disease there's a difference between finding a tick on you and finding a ticks on you yeah yeah no I literally have like one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen good news is we got John Truitt he is in the heart of Eclipse territory we're gonna head out we're gonna go there all these all these arachnids have been given us so much trouble yeah okay you you guys are definitely yes it's not worth our help well I'm do I know like that ruins your life okay it ruins literally everything that we're trying to work towards in hindsight what we thought were adult deer ticks may just have been chiggers or baby ticks so we just made contact with John he says there's gonna be a lot of people at his house but there's floorspace so we're good to go for the Eclipse you know honestly man sleeping on the floor with air conditioner sounds pretty nice right now that was a bit disappointed that we had to leave but we didn't want to risk our long-term health just to rough it out here even with the ticks if it weren't for the chronic disease that they could give us I'd still be able to rough it out here but it's only the disease like that's all I care about is I don't want debilitating things for the rest of my life right we trudged back to the car sad that we had to cut our trip short I've never met this grito you talked up before but I think I I hear him telling us to go but as the force had Illustrated so clearly sometimes the ups and downs are inseparable we'd be staying indoors tonight but the next day would be the total solar eclipse okay quick recap of everything that's happened we made it to Paducah Kentucky we're at John Truitt's house you might have seen his name in our videos before we're in a perfect spot for the totality of the Eclipse he's got a bunch of people over

we just had dinner it was some of the most amazing lasagna I've ever had in my life and I think gameofthrones about to start or it's already started we're gonna watch it soon good times dying flesh that's what we're having yeah this and all of that hang on a throw a party we're gonna try and get the Wi-Fi password now we'll watch this on my phone it was where I'm sleeping right here right here [Music]

we were back in civilization but that didn't mean we were gonna miss the Eclipse it's the morning of the Eclipse the weather it's perfect so it's eight o'clock the eclipse will start at about 11:30 a.m. so we have about two-and-a-half hours to eat breakfast and get everything set up and good so far and toughest camping we've ever done after breakfast we set up all our cameras and got ready to experience the total solar eclipse [Music]

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[Applause]

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oh we cracked [Music]

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watch out for watch out for shadows here what really see him where so I thought I'd seen some shadows nice these faint rippling shadows caused by the Eclipse but by the time the camera had got there they were all gone little flicker it's not really distinct and it's gone surreal really is the only word to describe

yeah looks like lately evening like the clouds are really the clouds look like a painted set like you know old movies because there's still light on them but at orange and like you start seeing stars come out weird dude like I looked around and I was like this is nighttime yeah my big thing was just how once it started to crest on the other side coming back from the c2 phase of the c3 phase I was really kind of impressed by just how like there was a diamond of light yeah and it coming out the other way just a little diamond yeah that'd be that really bright purple and you don't need that much Sun for it to be light outside yeah well so you know what's weird about this too is that night never happens that quickly so is much more gradual transition it's like it's only dark I was yelling like a schoolgirl too much so I didn't hear the insects but it was a perfect viewing of the Eclipse we're eating all of his food and he said thank you guys for coming I was we're on the way home I have got the memory cards in a safe spot take us away Scottie

and so after our camping trip had been cut short and after we experienced the Eclipse we made our way home to put together our eclipse video that's perfect circle switch plate the Sun but it doesn't please cards right risky maneuver Bob this community ver Bob no you can see there and that you did a pretty good job on his tolerance selection feathers that edge before he selects that flare but uh it seems he hasn't done that yet unfortunately Thomas has to go to the airport right now it's 3:20 in the morning and his flight leaves at 6:15 a.m. we're taking one for the team and we're gonna drive him there have a safe flight to Russia that mrs. Edward Snowden's alter ego and as Thomas just said he did drive the entire way back which is like a nine-hour ordeal not that long [Music]

also

all right see you get out of here good riddance

she's the cheesy music [Music]

it's 4:30 6:00 in the morning we're back our solar eclipse adventure is over good night have a good day see you tomorrow Trinity and that's the story of how our trip to Shawnee National Forest went wrong things didn't go according to plan but in the end we all got to hang out with each other we saw the total eclipse and we were Lyme's disease free when it's all said and done we couldn't really complain [Music]

you

you

okay so we've got better call Saul right here hurt call Kurt but they forgot to put the number on there so how am I supposed to call Kurt if I'm hurt

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AdventureArchives

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