Weird Things to Carry

[cburnett]

I'm considering carring a pitch pipe with me. I enjoy music so I can sing / analyze to myself jazz heads while I hike.

I don't my enjoyment to of music to interfer with other enjoyment of silince. So do instrustments have place in the backcountry? I lean towards saying NO, but if noone is bothered by someone strumming and you lugged it along, by all means enjoy yourself

[Don]

I don't carry an instrument, but my son routinely carries a native-american flute with him when he travels the backcountry. He carried a home-made ocarina on his A.T. thru-hike...other hikers did't seem to mind and some wrote in their journals that they enjoyed having the music at night...

[Kerosene]

I've read of a number of thru-hikers who have brought guitars and harmonicas. Then there's the guy who carried his tuba, which may have saved him when he slipped off a knife-edge on a rainy day and landed on the bell of the tuba!

[TJ aka Teej]

Weird things recently carried (no, not by me):
A kitten, riding on top of a backpack
Lifesized cardboard cutout of Kathy Ireland
Wiffle bat & ball
Soccer ball
inflatable life raft
pool cue
makeup kit (with lightup mirror!)
:O)
Tuba-man didn't carry one of those big parade style wrap around tuba, it was much smaller, kind of like a french horn.

[DebW]

Isn't there a guy carrying a chicken this year? Is he still on the trail? Heard he got one fresh egg per day.

[Presto]

The backpacker guitars sound a little tinny and it takes a while to get used to playing them cause you really need to use the strap since it has no body to rest on your knee. Those things said they are really great for backpacking and we saw 3-thrus carrying them in 2002. Sometimes I wished I had one - luckily Redman and the Mass-4 were cool enough to let me use theirs when we were camped out together.

Also saw a mandolin, harmonicas, pipe-flutes and recorders. All pretty cool.

[EarlyRiser]

i should take my tuba, riiight. sounds like he took a baritone if it was that small. although some tubas can be pretty light, still to heavy to carry id think though. perhaps a trombone....

[MadAussieInLondon]

my frivolous item is an aussie boxing kangaroo flag. when not dangling off my pack (its a full size one), being flown off teh top of some yanky peak! it may bet worn as a sarong or knotted around me head as a overly large bandanna with neck duster... or not...

oh and a can opener.

[jojo0425]

I didn't think it was weird, but everyone seemed very intrigued that I carried a can of cheeze wiz.

What can I say, I love cheese and that was the only way I could think of carrying it without spoilage. Plus, EVERYTHING taste better with cheese.

Smiley G

[Sleepy the Arab]

Say, I carried a can of cheese whiz too! It never ceased to amaze me how many people were fascinated by it. I had it in a mesh pouch on the side of my pack - very visable too. Every nitwit tourist felt compelled to point and say, "Hey, CHEESE WHIZ!" Hey thanks for telling me you waste of skin!

But by far the oddest thing I ever saw being carried was a lawn chair. The guy picked it up just before entering Pen-Mar park in the middle of the woods ("Hey, no one else was around and it still had a price tag!"). Every time I saw him from Pen-Mar to Delaware Water Gap he had the chair. Several times he had the urge to chuck the thing but would change his mind when he sat down in it. I lost track of the guy and the chair after the Water Gap. I wondered what happened to the chair for many miles. Then, one evening, I arrived at Mark Noepel Lean-to on the flanks of Mt. Greylock, and there, on the top shelf of the loft was a lawn chair...

[PushingDaisies]

This year on the trail I have seen:

a guy with a cat on top his pack
a child's windmill toy
several stuffed animals sown to packs
wiffle ball and bat
kites
umbrellas

and I am carrying a figurine of Roger Rabbit for my original hiking partner who had to leave the trail due to injury.

[Mala]

The last time I saw Doc and LLama, Doc was carrying a $6 lawn chair. Does anyone know if he still has it?

[Kerosene]

Last summer I ran across a section-hiking teenage girl who was lugging this huge yellow Tonka truck toy in one hand. Turns out she had bought it at a flea market for her young nephew since it reminded her of one she loved when she was a kid. Frankly, I would have stashed it by the side of a road and come back to pick it up on the way home instead of lugging it for 50 miles!

[PushingDaisies]

Originally posted by Mala
The last time I saw Doc and LLama, Doc was carrying a $6 lawn chair. Does anyone know if he still has it?

Yes, he is still carrying it.


To add to the list of strange things carried, I've seen a few people with rubber ducks tied to their packs lately.

[tygerlily]

Last month we had a bright orange smily face stuffed animal and a jolly roger accompanying us from fantana to winding stair gap.

[Downunda]

For Cascobay, in 2000 Fiddlehead carried a Martin Backpaker guitar and it sounded great. He visits forums from time to time, so maybe someone knows his email so you can ask him about it.

In 2002 I carried a bunch of small Koalas. I gave them out trail angels and children I met along the way.

Potato Man carried a bag of Maine pins that he handed out to all thru-hikers he met. The belief was that having the Maine on display in Maine guaranteed royalty treatment. The people of Maine certainly treated me like royalty, so it must have worked.

[icemanat95]

Is that the same Fiddlehead who hiked the Trail at least two times before, real name Glen Fleagle? If so, he's a great guy, likes his MJ a bit too much, but a great guy.

[EarlyRiser]

this last week i carried a small key id found on the ground in a little town i was passing though out in west virginia, it was lashed to my pack and seemed to have brought me good luck and good weather for two weeks in SNP.

[smokymtnsteve]

......

[Aswah]

strange... not really strange but when I hit boiling springs my pack weighed 22 pounds with five days food, 2 quarts of water, 150 crayons, numerous stickers and colored pens, walkman, external speakers and and forty tapes... it's all about the party...