Saturday, December 21, 2024

Warm Feet While Sleeping Outside

Posted by Adventure Dad on January 27, 2010 at 11:57 pm

To keep my feet warm in bed while camping, just before going to bed I put warm water (not boiling) in my Nalgene bottle and put it by my feet in my sleeping bag. By the time I get thirsty in the early morning, it’s cool enough to drink and my feet are still pretty warm. Boiling water could rupture the bottle and/or burn you.

Lint Tinder

Posted by Adventure Dad on at 11:51 pm

Use dryer lint as a fire starter when you camp. For really fail-proof tinder, rub the liny in Vaseline (petroleum jelly.) I store mine in an old prescription medicine bottle, which is pretty waterproof.

Waterproof Matches

Posted by Adventure Dad on at 11:46 pm

Dip the heads of matches in wax to make them waterproof. You can usually light them with the wax on, or you could peel it off if you’re having trouble.

Rocket Tip

Posted by Adventure Dad on at 11:44 pm

Add baby powder to the parachute of your model rocket to help you tell if it deployed properly.

Fishing Tip

Posted by Adventure Dad on at 11:41 pm

After you’ve been fishing, wash your hands with toothpaste to remove the fishy smell.

Terrordactyl

Posted by Adventure Boy on at 9:24 pm

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I like my Terrordactyl set. It is a HotWheels set that launches a rubber pterodactyl and catches cars. You put a car in a circle of track, and you pull a lever, and it goes around the circle and around the track and if you pull the lever again fast enough, you can get it to go around again. If you do this over and over, you can get it to go around multiple times.

After six go-arounds, the seventh will go off a different track and hit the trigger for the pterodactyl to fly. Sometimes the pterodactyl catches the car.

This is a toy that definitely takes some skill to get it to go around multiple times. You have to pull the lever the exact moment the car hits the switch. This is not a toy for a small child, because it takes some patience to put together and you have to match the letters to put the track together.

I think this is a good toy. it is very entertaining to put together and play.

Hover Disc

Posted by Pterodactyl on at 6:16 pm

I like my Hover Disc because it’s cool. I like to throw it up in the air and watch it come down. I think I’ve gotten it up to about sixty feet. It goes pretty high when you hold it sideways and throw it. It looks like a UFO. Sometimes Samuel (my cousin) and I both play with our Hover Discs at the same time.

It can fly sideways, and sometimes it turns around in the air and comes back so you don’t have to run after it.

I think it’s made pretty well. Sometimes my cousin and I accidently crash ours together in the air and they have not gotten hurt. We like to play a game where we pretend that it’s a real UFO and we try to keep it from flipping and make it land gently instead of crashing.

It can be filled with helium, but we have always just used air.

I think that everyone would like a Hover Disc. They are cool and fun to play with.

Hardy Boys – The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure

Posted by Adventure Dad on January 24, 2010 at 8:44 am

As a young boy, I was thrilled with the Hardy Boys. The series of books begins with a story called
The Tower Treasure
, and in 1956 some producers at Disney Studios decided to turn that book into a serial, which means that they made a movie out of the book, and broke it into nineteen episodes, each lasting about twelve minutes. They played these episodes over nineteen days during the after-school show called The Mickey Mouse Club, which you have probably heard about by now.

Children loved that show, and they rushed home everyday to see it. Part of the reason they did during October and November, 1956 was to see this serial. Each episode ends with an exciting “cliff hanger” ending, which leaves the Hardy Boys or some other characters in some sort of peril until the next day, when the story would continue.

The video is pretty faithful to the book, but there are some changes. The acting is very good, and although most of it was shot inside the famous Disney Studio Stage 2, you really can’t tell. Actually, because I knew that while watching, it really made the experience even more fun – that’s a very big and amazing studio full of cars and streets and real, life-sized buildings!

My children, both boys and girls, all love this set of two DVDs. My daughter, who is six, roller skates around pretending to be Iola Morton, one of the girls featured in the serials, and my boys love anything to do with the Hardy Boys, but they especially enjoyed this version. They also liked the extras, which include some historical narration and an interview with the two main actors, who are now all grown up. There is also one episode of the Mickey Mouse Club on the disk, which is the one that featured the first episode of The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure.

I think you’ll enjoy these DVDs, and if you do, won’t you please write a review in the comments below? You could earn points that you can turn in for prizes!