NOW THIS IS REALLY CAMPING..NATIVE AMERICAN WAY.

  I must preface this blog to say that my baby brother, Michael, is a very gifted artist…He is 4 years younger than I and has always had a knack for creating very interesting “stuff”..One of his loves is the outdoors..Our son, Kelly, hunts with Michael every year.  Michael taught Kelly how to trap animals, hunt, gun safety…anything outdoors…They hunt deer and turkey in the 70 acre woods a friend of the family owns..The last few years Michael has had a tepee in this woods…His last tepee got blown down by a bad storm…He built this one ..and I think it is bigger than the last one…Today, Terrie, I and the Heiser grandkids went to see his tepee…What a fun day we had visiting him…

Today was very cold and blustery, but inside the tepee it was warm and cozy….

He can put a fire in his firepit, or in the wood burner he built himself..That pipe in the middle takes the smoke out of the tepee…In the last photo, he shows us how he brews coffee in the mornings when he and his wife, Helen spend the night here…

The “Heiser Tribe”, left…Our daughter, Terrie, and her Uncle Mike, middle…and Mike and Helen’s granddaughter, Kylie, right…Mike’s grand kids all love to visit here, but especially Kylie, who already owns her own BB gun. Michael bought it for her and taught her gun safety….”You’ll shoot your eye out!”…but Kylie won’t…Kylie is age 11.

 

 

 

Brandon, their grandson, Helen, me and my baby bro…(Michael is the picture of our Dad..)

 

 

 

 

 

Mike adjusts the tepee flaps to allow more smoke to rise out of it..Those sticks on it are called lacing pins, and they hold it together..amazing.

When the door flap is closed, you see some of Michael’s artwork. He hopes to paint more figures on it later.…Right, the 2 poles used to adjust the smoke flaps…

Michael shows the kids how the lacing pins keep the seam of the tepee tightly together….

They also have pulled a very old and used camper into the woods. Kelly and Michael use that when they are hunting if the tepee isn’t heated up…They have water to the camper  thanx to Michael’s home built 50 gallon “water tower: (the photo on the right)..and they also have a wood burning stove inside…Not much to look at inside or out…Taylor said it looked haunted…I said..”It’s a man cave”…

  We had a great day to visit and the Heiser kids learned lots from Uncle Mike… I must tell you that Michael also had buckskins that he made for himself, but didn’t wear them today…The grand kids didn’t even know what buckskins were …he had to explain to them that they are clothing of long ago, made of deer hide…You see, that’s the trouble…Some kids never get to experience something so absolutely as neat as this first hand..As you can see,  my baby brother has always “marched to the beat of a different drummer”…The same might be said of me, too…….I sure hope so.!!!

A HUGE THANK YOU TO MICHAEL AND HELEN FOR SHOWING US A PIECE OF THE WAY OUR NATIVE FATHERS USE TO “CAMP”…

LOVE YOU, BABY BRO!!!!!

“Being pretty on the inside means you don't hit your brother and you eat all your peas - that's what my grandma taught me”.

                                                                                        ~Lord Chesterfield