House Rock Campground

It's been a while since I've written on here - my apologies. With the weather getting so nice I'm spending more and more time outside and less inside.  Also, when I'm inside I'm usually cleaning or trying to keep up with my 11 month old and 3 year old girlies!  Exhausting, yet wonderful! 
      The past two camping trips were spent at one of my very favorite campgrounds, House Rock Campground about 30 min past Sweet Home off of Highway 20.  Our first trip of the season out there was spent with a large group of friends celebrating several May Birthdays.  What a great time was had by all, despite the rain the drizzled off and on throughout the weekend.
       Our second trip out there was spent with my parents and was also incredibly enjoyable, though once again it rained throughout our stay.  I've decided that so long as I am warm at night, have warm dry clothes to change into throughout the day and have a toasty fire, I don't really mind camping in the rain.  Especially when it is only in the 60's.   I do still dislike cleaning up from a wet camping trip, but what's to be done?  It's still worth it!

   As I gear up for our next camping trip next weekend (promising to be the first real warm trip we've had this year) I spent a little time restocking on our home made fire starters and I thought I would share them with you.  This is a little trick I learned from my brother and all his years in the boy scouts, and it's a keeper.  For little to no money and very little time you can make some amazing little fire starters which help catch even the wettest of wood on fire.  Gotta love 'em.

What you need:
-1 egg carton
-paper bag
-2 sticks paraffin (sold at any department store) or you can use leftover candle wax - I used to keep all my candles with used up wicks and melt them for purposes such as these.
-enough dryer lint to fill the egg carton (I got enough for this purpose in just one week of doing laundry-we have a lot of people using our dryer and this time it paid off!)
-1 mason jar or large clean tin can
-sauce pan with a few inches of water
















1)  Put the wax into the mason jar or can and place that in the sauce pan with a few inches of water in it and heat it until the wax is completely melted.




2) Fill the egg carton with lint and place on a paper bag.




3) Pour the wax evenly over the egg carton saturating in the dryer lint.  You don't need a lot of wax, but the more you have (and the more lint you have in each) the longer they burn and the better they are at starting wet wood.



4) Let the wax cool completely.  Then using a knife or multi-purpose scissors (personally I prefer using a knife) cut the egg carton into 12 individual fire starters.  Store in a water proof container or ziplock bag.

Sometimes they take a few seconds to cach fire (depending on how thick the wax is over the dryer lint) but once they catch they burn great!