Luxury hotels, five-star services, long hours spent on the beach with light, fruity cocktails, some people imagine this as a perfect holiday in the summer. A cruise on board a floating city with crowds of stewards guarding your good time is the dream vacation for some. Some people consider it the greatest time of their lives to spend their time at home, hidden from the hot rays of the sun, while they play online slots at Red Flush Canada. A popular form of entertainment, which offers a great opportunity to relax and enjoy the glitter and glamour of gaming without the annoying crowd and noise (luckily smoking has at least been banished from land-based gaming outlets) while always having your favorite chair and a cold one at hand. Online gaming has a series of advantages compared to land-based one, starting with the promotions Red Flush has to offer. Besides the cash they can win, players can participate in tournaments and competitions to win intriguing prizes – and be entertained.
But I am deviating from my original subject – the perfect vacation.
For yours truly the perfect escape from the concrete jungle is a week spent in the mountains, preferably in an area where people rarely set foot, with nothing but me, nature, and preferably a significant other around. I spent quite a few summer weekends like this, away from the madding crowd, and I always came home relaxed and filled with energy. But “away from the madding crowd” does not mean becoming a caveman – so I have prepared a kit for such escapes to make my stay more comfortable. Here are the things I never leave home (for the mountains) without (and I will skip the obvious list of medical kits and dry food).
1. A “dumb phone”
No matter how careful you are, accidents can always happen. Nature is not our enemy, but it has things that can sting, bite, or poison us, break our bones, and leave us incapacitated. This is why it is important to always have something to help you keep in touch with those who can save you in a worst case scenario.
As I learned during one of my first outings, smartphones do you close to no good in such situations. Their batteries struggle to keep up with the energy needs of their powerful hardware. This is why a “dumb phone” (as opposed to a smartphone) is always a necessary thing to keep in your backpack. Besides, as far as I have observed, dumb phones are usually more capable of making calls using a weak signal, and their battery life is much longer than any smartphone I have ever tried.
2. A solar battery pack
Dumb phone or not, modern day hikers are always in need of some energy. Printed books are heavy, after all – besides, I am a fast reader, capable of finishing three to four classic SF novels in a week (I am an SF geek). Back in the day, I chose a tablet over an e-book reader to accompany me on these journeys, which has a rather weak battery life, so I chose to invest in a solar powered battery pack to keep it fully charged during my trip. The batteries recharge over the day, while I’m hiking, cooking, or simply relaxing by the tent, and during the night it helps me keep on reading my favorite books.
3. A shovel
I spent a week once camping in an area with a significant bear population, so I had to make sure no surprise tent-mates appeared during the night. I studied several options to keep bears away from my campsite, and I finally found that “Murus Dacicus” (the Dacic wall) was the perfect solution. Sticks and stones can break your bones, but they are the perfect building material to create such a defensive structure (it can take quite a few hours, complete with pointy sticks on the top) and when the construction is ready, it can keep bears away without a problem. But you will need a shovel to build it.
A small but sturdy shovel has many uses when hiking: you can dig a ditch around your tent to keep rainwater from taking it away, you can bury your biodegradable waste to keep your area tidy, you can use it to dig a hole for the campfire and cover it with dirt when you leave – and it takes up just a little space in your backpack (or strapped to your waist).