Camping is a go!

I'm heading in on Monday for five days and I can't wait! The forecast looks great, my gear is more or less packed, so now it's just a waiting game. I'm once again re-jigging how I pack things - you'd think eventually I'd just stick to something, but nooope. 

The current 'problem' is that I pack my SLR in a big, heavy duty dry bag that I roll down about a dozen times to close. Except on rare occasions, that dry bag is out of reach in a dry hatch while I'm paddling, and it's always in my canoe pack while portaging. In other words, I rarely take photos or videos while I'm travelling because getting at my camera is too much of a pain in the ass, and considering most of my trips have me on the move every day, I'm missing out on a lot of opportunities.

So, while my kayak already has a front day hatch, I'm adding a deck bag. The things I've been putting my day hatch (water filter, dromendary bag, sunglasses case, miscellaneous) will move to the deck bag. The day hatch will now have the camera in it at all times, paddle and portage. It means I can (ahem) whip it out at any time there's a reason to, and will hopefully mean I take more photos while travelling, which is when my "get-there-itis" strikes and I often don't take a single shot for hours. 

Beyond taking more photos while on the move, my main goal for this camping trip is this: to see the night sky, and to take photos of it. I've spent countless nights in Algonquin and I've almost never seen the stars. I go to bed early and wake up just before the dawn. On this trip (and so far it looks like the forecast is going to work in my favour) I'm still going to go to bed early, but I'm setting an alarm for 2 AM. When I wake up in the pitch black, I'm going to walk down the water's edge and breathe in the night sky. When I finally get over that enough to think about other things, I'm going to try my hand at long exposure photography. Wish me luck!