Campground Review

I have been to the Pumphouse Recreation Site multiple times for day use purposes, as this is a common boat launch location on the Upper Colorado River. This past weekend was my first time actually using their campground and I was quite pleased. Although we arrived fairly late on a Saturday evening in the summer, there were still quite a few campsites available. We had no trouble finding a site with a level parking spot for our campervan on the night that we arrived. Camping here offers a great base camp for those looking to get out on the river for rafting and fishing or exploring hikes in the surrounding BLM land. Overall these are my thoughts on this campground-

Pros:

• Clean
• Easily accessible
• Great location for nearby adventures and activities
• All basic amenities in clean and working order (picnic table, fire pit, toilet, etc.)
• Affordable fees ($10/night)

Cons:

• Sites are quite close together so not much privacy 
• Minimal tree cover provides little shade 
• Things can get loud here quite early due to all of the commercial rafting tours that use this area as a boat launch site 

Product Review

Nature’s Coffee Kettle has taken a unique approach to a camping essential: a great cup of coffee. As someone who loves coffee, I was particularly excited for the opportunity to review this product as a Ranger for the Dyrt. Luckily, I was able to try out the International 16 cup Pack which includes the trademark kettle itself and 4 flavors of their coffee refill packs; Colombian Arabica, Sumatra, French Roast and Guatemalan. Each refill pack allows you to make a brew a “pot” of approximately 4 cups of coffee. Each flavor was distinct and definitely made from top quality beans. My personal favorite was the Sumatra, although my usual choice of French Roast was a close runner up. The price of the product was quite fair and cheaper than what you would pay at a coffee shop if comparing cup for cup. The portable kettle system was quite light as well (1.2 oz) which I greatly appreciate as a backpacker who is always looking for ways to lighten my load without cutting out any essentials. There is however the issue of trash created from this product, as a good bit of packaging is involved, which should be taken into account for those looking to go ultra-light while using this product. 

Making the coffee itself was pretty straightforward: boil water, pour it over the coffee pack at the top of the bag and then allow it to run through the filter compartment and fill the lower “kettle” portion of the bag. Following the manufacturer’s directions, this process must be repeated multiple times to properly brew a good tasting cup of coffee. This is due to the fact that the top filter compartment is quite small and holds a little less than a cup of boiling water. Due to the design of the bag itself, one must hold up the flimsy top of the bag while the boiling water is poured into the kettle and drains through or the bag will be too top heavy and tip over. As a result, one must hold the top of the bag with both hands while another person carefully pours boiling water into the top compartment. After making 4 separate full kettles of coffee, we were unable to come up with a system of brewing that did not result in burnt finger tips and require the need of two people throughout the process. After the initial excitement/burn of the boiling and brewing process, one must quickly enjoy their cup of joe because the kettle lacks any sort of insulation to retain heat. Even on a fairly warm summer morning, within 10 minutes the entire batch was less than lukewarm.  Once the pouring began, our experience improved vastly. The design of the spout and handle holes on the bag makes the coffee very easy to pour. As previously mentioned, the coffee itself was very tasty and enjoyable. As with all things in the outdoors, things just seem to taste better when they take a bit more effort to make. With that being said, this product is certainly a unique system but still requires the use of a camp stove, fuel, pot or kettle, water, and a mug or cup to drink out of. In the end, we concluded that just using high quality instant coffee would have cut down significantly on the processing time, cost and packaging required to get our campsite java fix.