There are three essential pieces of equipment that any would-be outdoorsman must contemplate purchasing before heading out to the wide open spaces. We will give you a basic understanding of what to look for and how to maintain the most important parts of your kit. Fear not because at the Prepared Idiot, I have made all the mistakes for you so that you don’t have to look like an idiot when you are shopping, carrying, and maintaining your gear. So, let take a look at the big three of camping. 
exercise
The Prepared Idiot’s Guide to Backpacking (Part 2 of a Series)
The more I learn ab
out backpacking the more it becomes clear the thing that moves most people into the sport is freedom. Freedom from busy daily lives, form cluttered houses, and from the sterile concrete world that we have created. In this episode I continue to work on finding and answering all the dumb questions about backpacking in the great outdoors
The Prepared Idiot’s Guide to Hiking (Part 1of the Backpacking series)
In the age of social m
edia and jobs that require long hours of cubical sitting most modern humans have forgotten the basic skill of walking. Except for in large cities where motor vehicle travel is unpractical the quick trip around the corner to get a gallon of milk is done in our cars. Many children in the Southern California area where I live don’t walk to school anymore and thought of and evening stroll is a terror inducing event for many teenagers. So, we are increasingly spending more and more time sitting on our posteriors plugged into a screen and watching others have adventures and live their lives. While it is not realistic to think that you can escape the modern day working environments entirely you should also be aware of the potential risks of all that sitting. Continue reading
How to use a Suction Dredge for Gold Prospecting
Most people have heard old 
stories of the California Gold Rush in the mid-19th century. Prospectors from across the United States, and even across the world, headed for the West Coast in hopes of striking it rich. Some of them found their fortunes, others were not so lucky, but the thought of such an endeavor may be exciting enough to make 21st century folks wish it were 1848 all over again.
What many people don’t realize is that the gold rush is not over. Well, perhaps the ‘rush’ part is a thing of the past, but that is not to say that people don’t still find gold. Gold prospecting is alive and well for those that have the ambition and spirit to do it. For those adventurous few, there may be no better method than suction dredging.
Continue reading
The Prepared Idiot’s Guide to Backpacking
About three weeks 
ago one of my older sons came up to me and stated that he wanted to go backpacking. It is amazing as an adult how easy it is to put things off and then before you know it you can’t seem to figure out how to fit fun and adventure into the schedule. I would like to change this. Continue reading
American’s have the Most Expensive Pee in the World.
Someone once told me that American’s have the most expensive pee in the world. This expensive urine is due in large part to the $27 billion dollar supplement industry. The truth is most people know that the
y are not getting enough vitamins and nutrients in there diets and they try to make up for this by not eating more veggies but by popping a daily multi-vitamin. There is an issue with trying to get your B12’s and vitamin C’s through a pill. The problem is you are flushing a most of the money and you are spending on those pills right down the toilet.
Continue reading
How to Use a Sluice Box
In the early gold 
rush days the sluice box consisted of a simple wooden trough lined with raised obstructions placed at a ninety-degree angle to the flow of the water. These obstructions are what are known as riffels. When all of the gold carrying gravel is “run” through the sluice the water is shut off and the riffels are removed. The heavy materials containing the gold known as concentrates would be gathered. This run would sometimes consist of processing several tons of gold-bearing gravel through the box. Continue reading
How to Stake a Gold Claim
You might be surpr
ised to learn that you can still find gold in the United States. In fact, over 80% of the world’s gold is still yet to be found. I guess once you realize these facts the questions are: Where can I go to find gold? And if I do find gold how can I be sure I get to keep it? Well, there are two likely routes you can go to answer these questions. First, you can join the Gold Prospector’s Association of America (GPAA) then you are entitled to go out and prospect on any of there gold claims or land leases across America. If you are the more adventurous type you can strike out on your own on any of the open public land across the country and try and stake your own claim.
Here is the Idiot’s quick guide on how to find and stake your very own gold claim: Continue reading
The Top Three Things to do as a family in Yosemite with Young Children
As a father of not one but TWO sets of twins 
under the age of ten it is important to find something that we all can enjoy and accomplish when we are in the great out of doors. We as a family of 6 make the trip to Yosemite National Park every year. We have whittled them down to a top three must do events each time we head to camp in the valley. Continue reading
Where to Look for Gold in a Stream or River
When I first started 
looking into how to find gold I assumed that all of the gold that was there to be found already had been. As it turns out, I was wrong. Really wrong. Less than 10% of all of the world’s gold has been extracted from the earth. That is great news for those of us that still want a chance to go out and find our share. Continue reading
The Prepared Idiot 