Who's The Dinner Guest At Camp Tonight?

Hello. Rockhopper here. I don't usually have company at my campsites, but I'm going to have some this evening. So stick around to see who's going to join me. Who's that coming up the road? Coming right up toward my camp. Hey look, it's my buddy Michael. Hey, he's coming up. He's going to camp with me. I rarely get visitors to my camp spots, but yeah, I've got some visitor tonight. He's going to hang out. We're going to have a campfire and hopefully a good old time just hanging out. Bro. Yo, bro. Hey, bro. Good to see you, bro. Good to see you. Yeah, macho men don't hug, do we? Well, not while one's holding the camera. All right, well this is the camp spot right over here and it's a pretty nice one. I think I got a good spot. We did pretty well for the evening. This is really nice. Nice little fire pit right over here. Let me show you around my house. There's the stove and oven right here. Thanks for bringing some firewood in here, dude. My pleasure. Great spot. How much did you pay for this? You know, places like this are priceless. Yeah, there we go. That's where we're going. Five million star hotel. You can't beat it. You have five million stars at least. Yeah, yeah. Well, actually in the Milky Way I know that there's at least 200 billion. Anyway, so much for the science lesson. Okay, well, yeah, so get yourself situated. We'll have a campfire in a little bit, watch the sun go down or whatever. Sounds good. Make yourself at home. Isn't there a movie theater? Is there a Starbucks around here? Starbucks might be in the back of your truck if you brought some coffee. I don't know. All right, well, sounds good. I'm going to get unpacked. All right, good deal. Michael's attempting to make a fire here. So far he's managed to make a grass fire, but the wood is not cut. Mr. Michael, you have not learned the ways of rockhopper fire making. He made two more nights out with the rockhopper, and I'll be taking over his YouTube channel. That is highly unlikely, Weedhopper. If one cannot make fire in wilderness, one cannot take over channel. Okay, well, maybe in danger. I think the only thing we're in danger of is not having a warm meal. After much effort and many bundles of grass, Michael finally got the fire going, so we're going to cook up some dinner here. So what are we having tonight, Michael? Gourmet quinoa with beans with some pickled cabbage under a million-star sky. Okay, show me this quinoa here. Yeah, it took about three times as long to cook as regular quinoa because we put this foil around it to not blacken the pot, and I don't live in the wilderness. I have a significant other to go to who would probably make me for dinner if I blacken these pots and ruin them. But anyway, it worked out really well. It just took about three times as long to make because the pot was insulated largely by that aluminum foil, so just a little trick if you're going out in the wilderness and want to take along some of your good pots. Good advice. Shine the light on our quinoa here, our plates of quinoa over here. There's my bowl, and then he's got his plate here. Then teaching the survival expert something, that pickled vegetables will last without refrigeration, and so this is pickled cabbage, and the vinegar lasts forever. You just keep using it over and over again. It doesn't go bad with whatever veggies you put in it. My favorite is cabbage and obviously cucumbers to make regular pickles, but you can put literally any vegetable you want in this. Good advice. Of course, the rock hopper is learning something from somebody who is not nearly as experienced as he is. What do you know? Amazingly, the rock hopper, yes, it's understandable he doesn't carry veggies and fruits with him because that goes bad, but salt. Come on, rock hopper, what's the story? How can you eat without salt, especially when you've been sweating all day doing heavy exercise? So we're just going to improvise here, take some rock hopper chips here. That's a new brand for you, and just sprinkle them on the quinoa, and we may have a good improvisation for salt. Shall I do it for you as well? Yes, please. Okay. It's been a long time since rock hopper has been mothered like this. I can say that because I've been called a mother before. Yeah, more than once probably. Yeah, okay, well, rock hopper doesn't sweat half as much as you do going up those hills, so he doesn't need as much salt. That is true. I will concede that. All right, we'll enjoy that quinoa with some of those tortilla chips on top. We already had some tortilla chips and crackers with hummus, so that was pretty good. And the rock hopper has made the quinoa song. Shall we sing it together? Ready? One, two, three. Wah, wah, quinoa. Michael likes to think he's the quinoa king, but that was pretty bland, I've got to say. It doesn't have any salt. No, it was pretty bland. You need to put stuff in the quinoa, because quinoa in and of itself is pretty boring and bland. Although, not everybody might agree with me. So, for the man who's living out in the wilderness, deprived of all earthly contact sometimes, I brought him a special, special treat. Can you guess what it is? Chocolate? You got it, brother. This is homemade chocolate. It's something that I discovered how to make through a friend of mine, because I can't eat sugar. I react to it. So this is made with stevia, coconut oil. You can see there's sunflower seeds in it, and put chia seeds in it. And it's so simple to make, and it's absolutely delicious. Just as good as any store-bought chocolate, and 100 times healthier, because it doesn't have all the sugar in it. I use, like I said, I use raw stevia, the green stevia. And then just put whatever other ingredients I want in it. All right, well, that sounds good. Thanks for bringing that, Michael. Well, you even get the biggest piece, my brother. Oh, boy. All right, thanks. You're welcome. Big chunk of chocolate. Cheers. L'chaim. Having some campfire conversations, the rock hopper and I were talking about a mutual friend of ours who, probably something that all of us have experienced, where suddenly people get mad at us for no reason. They start dissing us for no reason. And this friend, who's a great guy, like all of us, has his flaws. Suddenly, it seems like some separate friends have just ganged up on him. So he emailed me. And a little bit, as all of us would be, when suddenly people start talking about us in a negative way, especially more than one person, he wanted to know what my opinion was of him. And he sent me the letter that somebody else sent him, which was kind of a nasty letter in the name. They were pretending like they were being a friend by sharing these things with him, but giving no grace, giving no opportunity for all the good things in his personality. So I wrote him back, Hey brother, here's the fact of life. Everyone with a strong, outstanding, unusual personality will attract criticism. And there are some things to consider what this other person said and what the others have said. Or no, I wrote, are there some things to consider what this other person said and all the people that had ganged up on him. So I wrote, of course. But like with all of us, myself at the top of the list, there's 10-15% of our nature that's worthy to look at regarding our own soul's evolution. Meaning, things to work on and perhaps improve. That's being a human. But when someone comes across overly strong and blinded to the 85-90% of what's right with a person, that's where a mutual friend of ours, Jeanette's saying, comes in. If you have a problem with me, one of my favorite expressions, if you have a problem with me, take it up with yourself. Which is to say, it's as much, if not more, about them than it is about you. Love you brother, Michael. Alright, well that's some good little piece of wisdom there. Thanks for sharing that. My pleasure. So you got a new sleeping mat, huh Michael? Yeah, one of these newfangled mats. And it's a good one for warming yourself up on a cold night like this. I don't know how efficient it is. Because what you're doing right now is you're pumping it up with a mini pump that's inside there with your foot, right? Yeah, it's actually pretty cool. When you push down, the air goes in because your foot's covering it. Don't ask me how that works. When you go up, it doesn't let the air out. But you have to, it takes about three minutes or so to get it pumped up. But you can see the air is, it is warming me up. And the air is getting in there. Yeah, but you've been at this for like five minutes already. Well, I'm happy for the exercise tonight. Because it is a little cold tonight. It is cold, yeah. It looks like you're going to get plenty of exercise. Because this thing's not even halfway inflated yet. I hit the other foot. Am I inflated? Um, maybe. Is it in there? And you've been doing this for how long? Well, let's see. Wasn't it light when I started? It's almost just about done now. Here we go. Oh, good. Okay. That's, that's, that's, I guess, that's about right. Better, huh? Okay, well, you can give it the sleep test a little bit. Yeah. Oh, great. Dead battery. Seriously? And I'm in the middle of nowhere with no one around for miles. Has that ever happened to you? Where you get a dead car battery while you're in the middle of nowhere? It's happened to me a few times. But it's not going to happen anymore. And it doesn't have to happen to you either. And here's why. Because now I have the Avopow Portable Jump Starter. That's right. You can just hook this thing up to your car battery. It's got a power pack right here. And you've got your jumper cables built in. Just hook the cables right into the portable power starter. And click them on in there. And when you do, that little blue light will come on right there. Telling you it's on standby. Hook the mini jumper cables up to the proper terminals. When you hook the cables up, the green light will come on right down there. And you'll be ready to jump start the car. Just get inside, turn the ignition key, and you're ready to go. I'll be carrying the Avopow Portable Battery Jump Starter wherever I go from now on. And it comes in this nice little carrying case. You can charge it from a cigarette lighter or from USB. However, if you want to charge it from the cigarette lighter, you might need an additional attachment. I'm glad I can say goodbye to the days where I had to walk for miles just trying to find somebody who could bring their vehicle up to give me a jump start. Or just sitting beside the car, waiting and waiting, maybe a day, maybe two days, maybe even longer, maybe even three days, or even possibly more, depending on where I was at, for somebody to come along so I could get a jump start from them. The Avopow Portable Battery Jump Starter. From now on, I'm not going anywhere without it. Hello there, little birdie. You like looking at yourself in the mirror, huh? Come on. First it was my mirror. Now he's preening himself up. There he is. You beauty, you. Aren't you a beauty? Yes. Okay, just stay there. Pose for us. You can move a little bit. Smile. Yes, show your other side. Good morning. Michael and I are going to head down this trail, Badger Springs, and we're in the Iowa Free National Monument, and there's something really cool at the end of this trail, so come on, let's go check it out. So we're heading down the Badger Springs Wash. You can take the little trail right along here or the wash just right down there. It all takes you down. We're getting into the transition zone. You can see some of the saguaros up there. So we're leaving the mesquite forest behind and heading on downstream a little more to the Iowa Freer River. Right behind Michael, you can see the petroglyphs. They're hundreds of years old, possibly even 800, maybe even 1,000 years old, and I'm going to go up a little bit and show you the petroglyphs just up on the rock above him. Looks like a map of a new housing subdivision. I'm standing in the bed of the Iowa Freer River, and usually there's water flowing through here. I've never seen it this dry, so Arizona must be in a pretty serious drought right now. Here's a modern-day pictograph. That's a phaenopepla right there, the little black bird. It's got some white in the wings. We're getting into the upper end of the Sonoran Desert, and you'll find many intriguing cacti out here, which are beautiful in their own way, as well as bushes such as this jojoba bush. The jojoba does have edible seeds, but there won't be any at this time of year. Jack? We get all kinds of hikers out here, like this guy. Hello. How you doing, buddy? Hello. Can you sing a song? Yeah? Hello. Hi. Well, thanks for coming on the hike. Hi, bud. You want to get on my hand? Okay. Hey, cool. Well, nice to meet you. What you up to? You going to climb on my shoulder? Hey. Oh, you like that, huh? Yeah? You're my new travel buddy. Cool. All right, you want to come on over? Oh, now you want to play with a hat. Okay. Where'd you go? Oh, you're back there. He's eating your smiley face. Yeah, he's getting the buttons off the back. Okay. He was chewing on the smiley face before. That's cute. Oh, cool. Take him, I'm not... Oh. Okay. He likes that? Put your hand out. There you go. Hey, bud. Well, that is one relaxed Amazon parrot right there. Back up on my arm. Backwards. You can send him backwards. Send him forward, at least. Send him forward? Yeah, it doesn't hurt his feathers as much. Looks like this might be a trapdoor spider. So he's out for a little stroll, I guess, because usually they're in their burrows. And if you get beyond the canyon, you might get a little glimpse into traditional Arizona life. So what did you think of the hike? It was like anywhere you go. It was beautiful. I love that you can... You know, on the trail there's people there, so it's safe if you need that, and yet you can go off the trail and get quite a distance away, and personally I just love finding a nice rock somewhere, a nice little flat spot, sitting there looking at the scenery, meditating, thinking, clearing my mind, and because of the beauty, and yet at the same time the highway was off in the distance, far enough where you barely could hear it, so it wasn't disturbing, because I usually don't like to be near a highway, but it was like an object of interest. So, yes, highly recommended. Yeah, and the highway is just right out there. It's I-17, so it's easy access if people want to come here and do a nice little hike. How far do you think that hike went? I would say a mile, mile and a quarter, most mile and a half or so. Very easy hike, flat. Anybody can do it. If you can hike a mile and a half, you can hike this trail. All right, so, I mean, all in all, it's a pretty good trail then. Absolutely, and they've got a wonderful petroglyph, which we'd have to leave it up to experts to say how they make those petroglyphs. I always thought petroglyphs were like inside of caves, so they'd be protected from the wind and the rain, but this petroglyph was just right out in the middle of nowhere, or actually right out in the middle of where all the elements were, so you wonder, how did this thing last for 800 years? If indeed it's 800 years old, which it may very well be. Yeah, who knows? Maybe the rock hopper made it, just wanted to show me some, you know, make it more exciting. Well, I don't think the rock hopper does that kind of thing. I think he just hops rocks. He doesn't chisel into rocks. That is true, that is true. He is an authentic guy. The rock hopper is like one of the most coolest guys in the world. If you're not watching his channel already, you've got to watch the rock hopper. There's just nobody in the world like the rock hopper. Well, wow, that's a serious promo right there. There you go, there you go. That's an extra hundred bucks for you. Oh, yeah, well, that's an extra hundred bucks for you, dude. You didn't expect that, did you? All right, well, thanks for that. All right, see you, bro. Michael left, but I'll be camping here another night. But tonight, I'm going to put a little towel over the side view mirrors, because I don't want the cardinal pecking at like five in the morning at his own reflection and waking me up and keeping me awake. And on the other mirror as well. Hey, you, get out of there, buddy. Hey, go on, you skunk. There are lots of little creepy crawly things like this darkling beetle, which stands on its head when it feels threatened. What do you guys think of my new wheel cover? I think it's pretty cool. All right, well, I hope you enjoyed hanging out and visiting with Michael and myself. Don't forget to give me a like in the video, share, and subscribe. Until next time, this is Rock Hopper. I'll see ya. Hello.