Matter of Facts: Back to Reality

[00:00:06] Welcome back to the Matter of Facts Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MWFPodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Ravelet, Andrew, Nick are on the other side of the mic and here's your show.

[00:00:30] So I'm not totally sure about that intro, but I know someone is going to really appreciate it being much shorter and sweeter and to the point. And someone's going to get really aggravated because I just screwed up all the presets they had to skip the first one. The first X number of seconds of this podcast. So you're welcome if I ruined your day and I'm sorry if I didn't or vice versa, something like that. Oh, let's see here. Before we do the admin work, it is worth pointing out that Radical Fraggle was first into the chat.

[00:00:55] Steward is on time for once, so I'm pretty sure the world is going to end. And hello to Jeff Jagg. I saw him leave a comment on Facebook saying that next year he's really going to try to make it. And you should, you should. It's a lot of fun. But absolutely. The name of the episode is back to reality. We're going to talk about the summer camp trip with a little bit less drinking and tomfoolery than what we had a week.

[00:01:23] We had significantly fewer dogs. Oh, yes. There were some dogs in the background of that one. How many damn dogs did we have there? We had your one. The reins has brought two. And then there was Benny and Sophie. Yeah. Seven, nine, maybe. Because see, there was three, two, five, six, eight. Eight. Yeah, at least eight. Who else's dogs are you counting? Well, there's the two Dachshunds. Yes.

[00:01:53] There is Josh's three. Wait, Josh had three? I thought he had two. He had auto. Maybe I'm double counting. Maybe I'm double counting one of the dogs. Oh, no. Josh's third dog was somewhere else. Yeah. Seven. Seven. I still don't know where you're getting seven. It doesn't matter. There was a ton of dogs there and a ton of campers. Well, there was five just between Tommy and Josh, plus the two Dachshunds and mine. There were four plus the two Malinois.

[00:02:23] I totally forgot about Tim and Caroline's two Malinois. Okay. That's where our numbers are coming apart. Those dogs are great. Oh, dude. It was an absolute bucket of fun this year, like it always is. Mm-hmm. But I have to do admin work and then we have to address the topic. So I'm Phil. This is Nick. Andrew's not with us, but he was definitely not abandoned on the side of the road somewhere in the UP by Tommy.

[00:02:53] I have it on good authority that he made it home safe. He contacted me. For those of you who missed Andrew, he was on the last episode. You should check in. But Andrew played host to me and my wife and my daughter for a couple of days before he joined all of us up in North Michigan on the trip. And I'm not going to lie, dude. Like it, we intentionally made the decision to go up a few days early, spend some time with Andrew because we haven't seen him, you know, face to face in a while.

[00:03:23] And we got to catch up with Trek from formerly of MDFI. Now he's just an instructor and seven owner. I saw Trexico. I now have a much bigger adult wish list. Accurate. Caught up with Uncle Randy, saw the church, and my adult wish list got a lot longer. Got to hang out with Andrew's parents, Harold and Sandy. Haven't seen them in a couple of years, and they're an absolute ton of fun.

[00:03:53] And got to meet Andrew's significant other. So I can confirm that he does, in fact, like girls and is having some pretty good luck with a really cool one. Fantastic. I mean, I would love to, like, goof on y'all and say that it's like, you know, random Internet stranger who's like the female version of the Nigerian prince. But, like, I've met her in person and she's a real cool girl. Hey, man, the Internet works out pretty well for some of us. I mean, you and I both met our wives on the Internet.

[00:04:22] I'm saying, man. Got her in the same place to get everything else. Amazon. No, the Internet. This was pre-Amazon. But now I'm wondering how long it'll be before you can purchase a girlfriend on Amazon. Well, well. I imagine you probably can, depending on how high your standards are.

[00:04:48] I'm going to take that that one offline before we get really, really crazy. OK, patrons. The patrons fund the show. They keep the shit show on the rails. And I definitely appreciate them continuing to not make this be a line item in my personal budget to keep the show going. And for the rest of you freeloaders, I'm not mad at you. I'm disappointed. I'm very happy to have anybody listen who wants to listen.

[00:05:15] But I always have to give the shout out to the patrons because they keep the bills paid. And the other thing that keeps bills paid is merch. And the Brannons were actually here in southeast Louisiana and dropped in on us the other day to have some food with us. Share dinner. B.S. Chris actually asked me, he's like, so what's the general rule on carrying firearms in your neck of the woods? And I was like, concealed is concealed. But let's stick to that. Yep.

[00:05:45] And Cyprus survivalists. So right before we went up north to the matter of fact, camping trip, Cyprus survivalists had our second quarterly event. It was a ton of fun. We are already kind of starting to lay groundwork for our third quarter event. It will be sometime in a couple of months. Hopefully when it cools down, because we're talking about doing a little camping trip down here in Louisiana, which is why we're trying to push back to like October. So it's not, oh, my God, Jesus Christ hot.

[00:06:16] October is a good time for a camping trip. Hell, even up by me right now. I think it was 93 today. Yeah, it was 92 down here. And I don't even know what the humidity was. It was freak all of it. It was. Thank you, Raggle Fraggle, for that one. Yes. We appreciate the external research help. Yes. And we have to use the inclusive term. They're inflatable girlfriends. Oh, they're not just inflatable now, I hear. Nick, I don't even want to go down this road to ask.

[00:06:43] I don't even want to ask how you know so much about them, because I'm not going to like the answer I get. I'm just guessing, man. I'm just guessing. OK. Look, I'm just saying technology has progressed. I'm sure technology has progressed for them, too. Perhaps, perhaps. So before we get to talk. Do you not play those little mobile games on your phone and get the really weird ads for the AI chat bots? I don't think I play the same kinds of games you do. No, man.

[00:07:13] Tetris, the free Tetris on your phone comes with the ads every few levels. Mm hmm. Oh, all right. Well, you got to get yourself some Tetris, man. Tetris is awesome. All right. So before we get to talking about the camping trips or bastard, Raggle says main hit triple digits today. Jesus. Yeah, I don't know which one of your past. I don't know which one of y'all anger mother nature, but please apologize already. Don't tell her to calm down. Just go and apologize.

[00:07:43] Oops. When you tell Mother Nature to calm down, Hurricane Katrina hines you. Don't do that. All right. Nick, you own this, so you have to explain it. I do. Independence Day. No, not that one. The movie would have been better with Danny Trejo. So today being the third, tomorrow being the fourth, happy Independence Day to us all. I just thought we'd mention it.

[00:08:13] Independence Day is coming up. And, you know, it's kind of a celebration of what we all here are all about on this podcast. I think, Phil, you would agree with me. I'd agree with you. Self-reliance. Telling the British to piss off. Telling the government, fuck taxes. And, yeah. That's pretty much it. I was already... Self-reliance part. I was already planning a post for tomorrow.

[00:08:39] Something about evade taxes and evade taxes, run guns, smuggle guns, and make your own moonshine. Be the kind of... There you go. Be the kind of citizen the Founding Fathers would be proud of. Happy Independence Day. Absolutely. But, no. That movie would have been better with Danny Trejo and Steve Buscemi as the fighter pilots. I'm pretty sure every movie would have been better with Danny Trejo.

[00:09:11] Titanic. Yes. Infinitely better. Find me a role in Titanic for Danny Trejo. Well, he could have been... He could have been... He could have replaced What's-Her-Name. Okay. That would have been a better movie. Yep. I'm fine with that. Definitely would have been much more entertaining, wouldn't it? I'm absolutely fine with that. And then Steve Buscemi could have replaced Leonardo DiCaprio. Instantly much more entertaining. All right.

[00:09:41] I will allow this. We need to crowdfund a remake. No. That... That... One of those was plenty. Thank you. All right. So, where do we even start when we tell people that did not make it to this camping trip and haven't made it to any of the others? I feel like we have to start at the beginning. Sure. So, when this podcast very first started, like pre-Nick, pre-Andrew, when it was just me

[00:10:10] Googling how to start a podcast. And I understand how absolutely hilarious that sounds in 2025 when AI can invent a whole podcast for you. But in the old days, back in my days, Sonny, you had to Google this stuff because there was no pre-laid path for how to do this. You just figured it out. And I did that. And as Nick is...

[00:10:39] Want to remind me, this is all my fault now because I went down there. 100% your responsibility. 100%. Yeah. Making me responsible for all of this and all of y'all is a terrifying prospect. When you're not responsible for us, you're responsible for bringing the group of us together and whatever ensues because of that. Like I said. So, I'm responsible for hooliganism and mayhem, in other words. Yes. Okay. That's probably fair. Yeah.

[00:11:06] But when I first started this, the whole idea of the show was like I saw the preparedness lifestyle as being something that really should be more mainstream than it looked like. Absolutely. And I wanted to break down that stigma where people think, well, I'm not into preparedness because I don't do these weird things. And I wanted to show people, I'm like, no, there's perfectly good reasons to be a prepper.

[00:11:30] And most of the stuff you're doing in your daily life kind of slots into that Jenga stack someplace of preparedness. You just don't think about it that way. Yeah. And then as time went on, I started looking for kind of like my extended tribe. You know, I met Andrew. We started really gelling together while I was host and co-host. We got involved with the crew that puts on Prepper Camp, went out to a couple of those.

[00:12:01] Through that, we met James and the group at Prepper Broadcasting Network. And like as we grew in the preparedness lifestyle, the show continued to grow as well. And then that's kind of how we found our way to you, Nick. And then downgraded you from patron to co-host. Yeah, it works out. I mean. I get to hassle you in real time now. Okay. So I. You're welcome. Yes.

[00:12:31] I enjoy myself. But in the process of doing all this, like something stood out to me. And it was the it was the fact that like I could not get my my wife for years to come to Prepper Camp. I couldn't get my daughter to come. It was it was always the that's the boys trip. That's your thing. Sure. You know, like the prospect of living in a tent. Weather be damned, which was a big deal breaker for the two of them, because I normally when we go camping down here, we wait till it's cooler.

[00:13:00] We pick a good weekend. If it looks like it's going to rain the whole weekend, we'll usually scrap it, do another weekend. But in this case, like we were making I was making these reservations six months in advance and I didn't care if it was a tropical storm. We were I was going. Right. So that was a little more intimidating for my daughter, my wife and daughter. Can be for sure. The fact that we were going to almost make it a working trip for the podcast. They didn't feel like it was really their scene.

[00:13:28] And the idea of like, you know, eight hours, three days taking classes and everything just wasn't their thing. So that was about the moment I started talking to Andrew initially and said, hey, we're meeting this group of people at Prepper Camp. That's where we met Tommy and that's where we first met Tim. And that's where we met, you know, that's where we started meeting a lot of these people face to face. And I thought to myself, I'm like, but hold on a second.

[00:13:54] If I can't get these people to like come and hang out and bring their families, we're missing something here. We're missing. We're missing the ability to like knit a community together because we got to get the wives to get the wives together. We got to get the kids playing together. We got to get these people out of the environment where it's just I'm coming to take classes and take notes and put them in a more casual environment where a person who's not hardcore prepper will come and not feel threatened by that.

[00:14:24] And that's when my wife and I initially and then Andrew started talking about how do we how do we take this vibe, this around the campfire at Prepper Camp vibe, but we make it to where people want to bring their families out to it. And that's where you're succeeded. Yeah. Well, that's where that's where the matter of facts summer camp came from. And it was a really simple concept. It was always we're to get everybody together. We're going to pick a spot somewhere in the US.

[00:14:51] We try to stay kind of centrally located so that it's equal distance for most people to make it. And I always tell everybody the same thing. We're going to be here from this date to this date. Make your own reservations. You can tent camp. You can stay in a cabin, stay in a lodge, stay in a hotel. You know, Tim and Caroline bring their RV with them. Everybody does whatever they're comfortable with. And then we all spend that time together.

[00:15:16] We do a lot of sitting around the fire, fair amount of drinking, smoke way too many cigars. Well, we always wind up hiking together. We always wind up being tourists together. We wind up seeing the sites and exploring the area. And like it is always this very. It's always this very open. Do what you're comfortable with. Feel free to bow out if you're not happy with it. Go off, do your own thing. We'll catch up with you later. Right.

[00:15:43] And it has turned into this event that like, you know, it started as I've got this really cool camp vibe around the campfire that starts at about 6 p.m. at prepper camp. But I want to put that somewhere else where it's that's the vibe the whole time. And people bring their wives and their kids with them. And we've done that now. And this was the fourth year in a row that we've picked a spot, told everybody, this is where we're going to be. Hope we see you.

[00:16:10] And every single year there's been more people show up. Oh, Stuart. Stuart said my whole plan was to get them drunk, take compromising photos and extort whiskey and cigars to not share the pics. Look, I tried to get Phil drunk with some cask strength double O. You succeeded, sir. You succeeded. I am a lightweight. I am a very easy drunk. And that that cast ring.

[00:16:40] Actually, the first night I hit it a little too hard and my my acid reflux was like set to kill. Well, to be fair, there was also like three moonshine cherries in that old fashioned I made you. Yes, there was. There was. So that's all right. It was a good time. Oh, it was a great time. So the first two years we were at Lake DeGray in Arkansas, we stayed in the yurts, which you didn't make to any of those, Nick. And no, I didn't.

[00:17:10] You missed out. And I say that because you're it's look awesome. I know sooner or later we're going to wind up back at Lake DeGray because it's such a fun spot. It looks fantastic. It's going to be a little more unseasonably, unnaturally hot in the summer than it was in the spring. Yeah. But Lake DeGray is just a ton of fun. And when we ran out those three yurts, they're on a peninsula. So like we own the whole peninsula all to ourselves. It's such a great little setup.

[00:17:37] But and then last year we were at Fall Creek Falls in Tennessee. Yep. So rented a bunch. We had a group that stayed at the campsites. I want tent camp. A bunch of us rented out cabins that were literally hanging over the lake. That sounds like Tennessee. My wife and I had the experience of we had some difficulty with the the climate controls because, you know, we found a thermostat and we were fooling with it. We couldn't figure out why the air condition wasn't getting any cooler.

[00:18:07] I mean, it wasn't like bad, but it was like it was just on the verge of being a little warmer than we wanted to be. And we couldn't figure out why it wasn't behaving itself. And then later on that evening, we noticed that the floor was awful hot. And that's when we realized that the thermostat we've been playing with was for the floor mounted heaters. Oh, because the because the cabin juts out over the lake, you have to heat the floor. Otherwise, it's too cool. Yeah. So once we discovered our error, we got everything adjusted properly. But that was an awesome trip.

[00:18:36] I mean, we we hiked four and a half miles down to the bottom of waterfall. The kids, most of the kids got to go swim in it. Some like mine were like, it is entirely too cold to be in that water. The I think the Benefield kids and the the Rainses had no fear of cold water whatsoever. That sounds like kids. Yeah.

[00:18:59] Well, also for our favorite Wisconsinites, they they were the fact the temperature at which the rest of us would have been, you know, on the verge of hypothermia. They're giggling about it. It's a wild experience. But it was a great time. Like we did everything you can think of. We we hiked. We saw the sites. We went to a cave. We spent a lot of time just eating and goofing off and just hanging out. And like that's that's always the thing with that's always the bouncing act.

[00:19:29] Gillian and I and the rest of the campers try to manage is on the one hand, we're there. We want to see stuff. Yeah, absolutely. On the opposite hand, we don't want to be like a Bataan death march and we spend like three, four days killing ourselves doing 12 hour days. We want to relax and visit. And we always find that balance someplace. And then this year we went to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. And I well, we were not staying in the UP, but we did spend some time there.

[00:19:56] I mean, you could have thrown a rock and hit the UP as far north as we were. I mean, we were only like true. Yeah, we were only like what? Two miles from Mackinac Bridge. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. By the by the crow flies. Yeah. Yeah. Otherwise, by road, I think we're five or six miles from Mackinac Bridge. Yeah. So we spent two days like really hitting hitting the pavement hard. First, the whole first day was just Mackinac Island. Yeah, that was pretty cool. Do that. I would do that again.

[00:20:25] Mackinac Island is like being on freaking Mars. Like my wife had told me about the place before I went up there and I knew that it was like, okay, there's no motor vehicles like you. But you can you can understand those words and not understand the impact that has on your environment because the amount of horses.

[00:21:13] Well, not just that. Mackinac Island, but that was just something that was like the biggest culture shock for me. I did not. It not only that, but as I was driving, as we were walking around, I noticed that there were a lot of people on bikes that had like big old baskets on the front of them. I saw one or two almost like a rickshaw, honestly. And bikes with trailers and stuff like that. Yeah. But the other thing had jumped out at me and like it makes total sense when I put it this way.

[00:21:38] But like I noticed a lot of e-bikes, first of all, and very high end bicycles like there. I didn't see a lot of like cheap bikes there. I saw a lot of really, really nice bikes, which I guess makes sense. If you think about the fact that your primary mode of transportation on the island is by bike. Right. And all the bikes exclusively had street tires. You didn't see a single off-road tire on any of the bikes, which is interesting.

[00:22:06] I almost wonder if it's not. I've always had off-road tires on all my bikes growing up because I grew up out in the buildings. All trains, yeah. Yeah. 60% of the time we weren't on the road anyway. And if you were, you shouldn't have been. So I suspect that it's either because there's a stated prohibition on like driving across people's lawns. Or at a minimum, it's probably a massive social faux pas because as well manicured as that place was.

[00:22:36] Oh, immaculate. And not even just like the public spaces or like the lodges and the hotels that were out there. But even. We did accidentally end up in a neighborhood. Yeah. But like even people's private residences were beautifully manicured. I can totally understand how it's like a, it's frowned upon to drive across somebody's lawn up there. Hence, everybody has road tires. Like that makes sense to me. Yeah. But. Yeah, that definitely wouldn't have been okay.

[00:23:05] But yeah, the overwhelming number of horses did mean that literally everywhere you walk, you have to watch road apples. True. Which, again. It wasn't that bad. It was surprisingly clean for the number of horses that were there. I'm sure they are going around at least once a day shoveling everything. They have to be. It is. It is probably continuous. I know when we were walking down Main Street, there were a couple of guys that were cleaning up the roads as we were just walking around. Yeah. But it's just one of those things that like.

[00:23:35] When's the last time, Nick, you were just walking around in a neighborhood and had to watch out for horse crap? I mean, it's not a common experience in the 21st century. Two years ago. Okay. There's a lady. Yeah. There's a. So there's a lady that lives just on the other side of our neighborhood that keeps horses. And every once in a while she comes and visits us. It's a friend of hers that lives in our neighborhood on a horse. Okay. So in your sample size of one, it happened two years ago.

[00:24:03] It's a rare occurrence everywhere else. No, I agree. World. Yeah, it definitely. It definitely is fairly rare. Yeah. But according according to my watch, we hiked 17 flights of stairs five and a half miles that day. It was a good start for the morning. Yeah. Yeah. And y'all saw the fort, which the rest of us we did out out of because by the time y'all went, y'all said you want to do the fort. The rest of us were starving. You guys were.

[00:24:30] But we did manage to do the fort and meet up with you by the time you guys were getting your food, which was pretty awesome. Yeah. Although it is worth pointing out that like we made multiple stops because like. Oh, yeah. A couple of people like, you know, just kind of goofed off at the shops. Gillian went looking. And there were four dogs with you. Yeah. Gillian went looking for postcards because her and her sister had this thing. Did you ever. Did you hear this story? Oh, yeah. She told me about it. Yeah.

[00:24:57] So my wife, everywhere my wife and her sister go, they find a postcard, write one word on the postcard and then mail it to the other sister. And my wife had to find a postcard and mail it to her sister. She found a good one. Oh, yeah. It was beautiful. Had a little bit of sentiment on the back of it. Yeah, exactly. Sisterly love right there. And then after that, I mean, it was hit the shops.

[00:25:25] I got groused endlessly by all of you freaking jerks because I went and got Kilwin's fudge and not genuine Mackinac Island fudge. To be fair, that was 90 percent Andrew's instigation. Oh, yes. It was 90 percent Andrew's instigation. And you know what? That's fine because it tasted amazing and I wasn't mad about it. Yeah. Yeah. And then my daughter wanted to go hit the haunted theater.

[00:25:52] I asked my wife if she wanted to go, fully expecting that she wouldn't say yes. Oops. She went in with us. She hates, hates haunted houses and hates horror movies and does not like being scared. She is notorious in this house, by the way, of, you know, the jump scare reels where like you're sitting there watching a reel with something nice and peaceful and something jumps out at you. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:17] Gillian has thrown her cell phone across a room when that jump scare happened. Interesting. Yeah. That's a choice. Phones are expensive. Yes. Well, this one's very well armored and has screen protector on for a reason. But she went into the haunted theater with us. How'd that go? The very first room, she got behind me, grabbed hold of my traps and closed her eyes and would not open them until we left.

[00:26:47] That's fantastic. Yeah. My daughter was having okay fun every now and then she'd drop an F-bomb and something would, you know, make her jump. Yeah. As we were getting ready to leave, one of the set workers jumped out at her and she swung on him. And then real. A well-raised daughter. And then realized she'd swung on a perfectly harmless human being and apologized to him.

[00:27:10] But the funny part was I was walking, I'm walking these two girls through and like I am literally telling Gillian like, hey, there's a coffin right there. Something's going to jump out of it. And oh, we're in a dark room. Something's about to grab one of us. I mean, I'm telling her what's going to happen. And you've been through enough of these. You could see it coming. I mean, yeah. And I don't scare. I don't scare easily. So. Right.

[00:27:33] But yeah, every time something would freak Gillian out, her little, those little fingers of hers would dig further and further into my traps until I was pretty sure I walked out with bruises. Well, that'll happen. Yeah. But it was a good time. You know, Gillian got her souvenir. Piper got the crap scared out of her and I got my fudge. And then we made our way back to Paradise Lake. That was so it's it's weird. And I took me a second to realize this. The name of the little bird we were staying at was Carp Lake.

[00:28:03] But the lake the cabins were on was Paradise Lake. It used to be called Carp Lake. They renamed it. Oh, and no, Gillian, I did not die. But I still was physically injured. And you should make it up to me. Well, look, Phil, as far as I'm concerned, you're the husband. You signed on for this. Thanks, Nick. Whose side are you on?

[00:28:31] I mean, I'm on the side of it's funny. So, yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that. You're welcome. Here I am trying to extort a back rub out of her. And you're on you're on the side of good fun. Thanks. There are far easier ways to extort a back rub. All you have to do is cook a very delicious meal. She cooked dinner tonight. Maybe I should give her a back rub. There you go. Done deal. Thank you, Nick. Seems reasonable to me. Somebody's got to do it.

[00:29:00] Somebody's got to do it. Anyway, so that evening, it was to kind of just by the time we got back to the cabins, we were all freaking zonked. Like I literally walked in the front door, freaking like rolled up my pant legs, shed my shoes and put my flip flops on and went straight to the back porch with a cigar. And we spent not a wrong answer. We spent most of the evening doing exactly what I love doing with all y'all. Like we sat around, we smoked, we drank and we just hung out.

[00:29:30] Ate some good food. What did we do that night for dinner? I know the reins is made. I think that was the reins. That was just about everybody for themselves that time. Yeah. That first night was everybody for themselves. And that's like one difference because like in past years when we've done this, we've always made a point of doing like, this is your night to cook for everybody. This is your night to cook for everybody. And as much fun as it has been in the past to do it that way, where like everybody has

[00:29:58] one, basically one meal they're responsible for. And we do communal meals. What we realized last year, and it wasn't as much of an issue at, um, at Lake DeGray, but it became an issue last year was that we, we were in a situation where sometimes we'd be out doing something and the family that quote unquote had to cook the meal had to bug out early. Right. So that they could go back to the cabins and start getting stuff ready for, for dinner. And it was like, that was when Gillian and I had the realization that like, okay, the

[00:30:28] communal meal thing might need to get adjusted or amended some kind of way because we don't want to wind up in a situation where somebody say, well, I have to go be an adult and cook for everybody and everybody else is all have fun. You know, like, so that's why we decided this year, like, okay, let's not do communal meals this time, not standardized, formalized communal meals. Um, Victoria, who was Victorian collar are two new campers this year.

[00:30:54] Victoria brought an absolutely ridiculous amount of homemade sourdough bread, which was amazing. Um, the reins has made a big old, big old pot of beans one night. And that, I don't think much of that made it home. Like we ate the, I think none of that made it home. Um, so everybody kind of like, what we ended up doing was, was like, everybody was responsible for their own dinner, but then post dinner when everybody was sitting around drinking snacky treats. Yeah. Everybody brought snacky stuff.

[00:31:23] And I think that was the best way to fit. I think we finally might've happened upon the best way to do this because everybody knew going in, you do your own breakfast, your own lunch, your own dinner. Mm-hmm. And that meant that to everyone's own taste and budget, some people opted for like mountain house in the morning. Some people cooked a whole big old breakfast, a castle or something. Uh, a lot of times we did. Hmm. Hang on a second.

[00:31:52] Jeff Jags said the rumble chat still not figured out. So the problem with rumble before I get back on my train of thought is that rumble does not have a direct API set up with stream yard. So I'm not able to see those chats in this interface. Although wonder if I can rig something up. Well, I mean, what we would have to do is somewhat one of us would have to have rumble open and be watching those chats, but we still won't be able to do what we do with like stream yard and be able to bring them in here and show everybody what we're talking about.

[00:32:22] That's fair. So now I will say that what I have considered doing, and I've been about this close to doing it a couple of times is just dumping stream yard and YouTube completely and just doing everything straight out of rumble. Could I could, and it would save a not inconsequential amount of money in the annual budget to do that. But we still, we still have more viewership on YouTube than we do on rumble. Um, then we do on rumble.

[00:32:52] And that's kind of, as long as that, that, as long as that continues to be the way, although it is kind of an argument to be made of like, do we have more viewership on YouTube because people can actually comment on YouTube and then we can see it or people can comment on Facebook and we can see it. Or it's just that rumble is still not mature enough. I mean, that's, uh, I don't know, guys, let us know what you think. If everybody says they're fine with rumble. Jeff Jack said, Oh, this is on my side.

[00:33:20] Still tell me to verify and haven't figured out how to fix it. Well, but that's also the reason why like a lot of content creators haven't completely embraced rumble yet. Like I enjoy using rumble. I make a point of like checking up on it every now and then, but I am not yet at the point of like full commit just because it's still not quite a mature interface yet. And the UI is not great for the viewer.

[00:33:48] Uh, you know, yeah, I would admit to that. Rumble's UI is definitely not as smooth as YouTube's. Their search function is getting better. Yeah. Not as good as YouTube's, but YouTube is also, you know, kind of piggybacking off of Google search search engines. Yeah. Which, which is the same. Can you, can you fight that? I mean, come on, Google, like they were the best first and best dressed for search engines. Yeah.

[00:34:15] Well, and it's also the fact that like you and I have had our issues with YouTube and by extension, you know, Google and by extension Facebook and by extension Instagram downvoting all of our crap numerous times. Oh, absolutely. And, and, and Braggle's right. Uh, one of the big reasons why everyone's on YouTube is because everything is on YouTube. It, it, it look, it's why they've tried several times to make like gun tube and it's never taken off every time because.

[00:34:44] Yeah. It's one of just guns is too small of a niche as, as popular as guns are just gun channels, just prepper channels, just whatever. It's never going to be the all of everything channels. Yeah. Now the only thing I think that could actually help us, but it would involve YouTube doing something catastrophically stupid, which they might do is I never know.

[00:35:10] I think if YouTube ever went full blown, these types of content are no longer welcome here. Like none of the censoring, none of the downvoting, none of the goofing around, none of the nonsense they pulled in the past where they just kind of like put their finger on the scale, but they wholesale said, they're still doing, which they still do. But if they went one step further and said all gun content, prepper content, right wing content, all that is no longer welcome on YouTube period of discussion.

[00:35:38] I think then all of that would bifurcate to rumble. Oh, and with the, and with the influx into rumble and with the, no longer having that content available on YouTube, I think then you would see rumble grow dramatically. And you would also see the audience bifurcate where you would have like to, to raggle fraggle's point, he'd go on YouTube for certain things and rumble for other things. Cause those two things would no longer, the Venn diagram would no longer overlap. Right.

[00:36:06] But that would, I think that the reason why YouTube has not done that is cause they know. Oh, it would just give money to their competition. Yeah. So they would rather, they would rather put their finger on the scale than. They'd rather control the forum than not. Yeah. So anyway, that, that, that is total, that is like 90% semi-informed speculation, but that's kind of the way I see it happening. I think it's a very fair point.

[00:36:33] Better to be controlled opposition than to allow your enemy to talk amongst himself in private. Probably. If that sounds really conspiratorial, sorry. That's because it is a conspiracy, Phil. Why do you think Google bought YouTube? I mean, aren't all conspiracy theories just fact waiting to have, waiting to be proven or admitted. Michael Jackson is dead though. No, he's dead. I think he was dead.

[00:37:02] I think he was an alien personally, but that's another show. I think he was just a mentally ill person who was abused chronically as a child and had a drug problem. Two things can be true at the same time. I do not know how aliens react to drug abuse. So, but for now I'm sticking with horribly abused child that that's probably more on point. So anyway, back to topic.

[00:37:29] Um, so the next day, Stuart, okay, pause for six minutes while I go help my wife with medical stuff. We could find just a little timer that counts down six minutes. Yes, but I don't want to encourage him. That's fair. He's incorrigible enough as this. No, no. It's incorrigible, not incorrigible. Incorrigible. They're different words. That's fair. They mean different things. Stuart is. I do not know the difference in spelling.

[00:37:57] Incorrigible means able to be encouraged. Incorrigible means Stuart. Ah, good. But, um, so the next day we, we didn't go back to Mackinac Island. We did however drive like 500 freaking miles. It wasn't five. Bruh. You guys, you guys drove as much that day as I did to get to camp. Okay. So me and my wife skipped out early.

[00:38:27] We left our dog back at the cabin. So we had a perfect excuse to miss the last four hours of driving. Yes. But we drove from Paradise Lake, almost to freaking Canada to Whitefish Point. Yes. Yes. And I'm not. Which fantastic. Yeah. Not even exaggerating. We drove almost to Canada. We went to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. I, by the way, I've never been to Northern Michigan.

[00:38:55] I was unaware of just how spicy the Great Lakes could be. I was freaking. Oh, yeah. I was shocked speechless at the sheer volume of shipwrecks off that point. Bro, they're a mini ocean. Okay. Okay. But hear me out. It's like when someone tells you that a mountain is really tall. And you're like, okay, it's a mountain. It's really tall. No duh. And then you stand at the bottom of it and look up and you're like, God almighty. Don't die, man.

[00:39:24] That is really tall. Okay. I understand it's a big lake. Okay. I can look at a map and you could fit almost my entire state in that, in the Great Lakes. Like it's a huge freaking lake. But to stand on the shores of it and not be able to see land on the other side is just shocking. Like I go through the same thing, by the way, even when I'm at the, like when you go down to like the Mandeville Lakefront and you're looking across like the launch train.

[00:39:54] And New Orleans is like this little sliver on the horizon. And Lake Pontchrain is not a little bitty lake. That's a big old chunk of water. The Great Lakes are great for a reason. They are freaking enormous. 30 foot waves. I'm going to tell you that like the day before we left, sitting at like just sitting on that back porch, watching Paradise Lake, which is a little bitty lake.

[00:40:22] Watching the waves that were cooking across that thing and then thinking about what it was like out on the Great Lakes that day, I was shocked. I was totally unprepared for how incredibly impressive and violent that those lakes can be. So I have gone on a salmon charter on Lake Michigan. I'm used to boats, grew up in boats.

[00:40:52] My dad's had a boat. This was a 30 foot cabin cruiser on Lake Michigan. When we left Winthrop Harbor, for those of you that are familiar with Lake Michigan, it's a pretty big harbor. About 6 o'clock in the morning, we leave on this charter boat. It's kind of late morning because it was an early season cruise. And, you know, 12, 14 inch rollers.

[00:41:12] Within four hours, it had gone from 12 inch to 6 foot to then 8 foot in a 30 foot cabin cruiser. So when you were standing on the deck of the boat, you could just, you know, you could tell that you were, that the top of the boat was just below the top of the crest of those waves in about four hours, four to six hours. That's called nope weather. Yeah.

[00:41:37] When the, um, when the first mate and the captain on your charter boat take off their life jackets is when you start getting concerned. Why did they take off their life jacket? Because the water was 40 degrees. Didn't matter. Coast Guard wasn't going to get to you in time. Outstanding. I asked him, I said, it's, you know, we had all, they had us all put life jackets on and all that. Cause it was getting a little rolly and you know, guys slip off the deck every now and then. Fair enough.

[00:42:07] Fine. But at a certain point, right before he told us, Hey guys, we got to pack it in early. Sorry. Got to cut it short. The weather's getting too, too severe for this boat. Uh, I see him stowing away the life jacket. So I asked him and he said, well, he said with the water temperature, the way it is, you will die of hypothermia before the Coast Guard gets here. So you can choose to drown faster. You can choose to freeze to death. Your call, man. I choose drowning. I mean, I still think I probably still choose hypothermia because then, although at 40 degrees,

[00:42:36] that's still going to suck. 40 degrees was surface temperature. Yeah. Anyway. So the shipwreck museum was sobering to say the least. Oh yeah. Very. Uh, after that we saw Taquamina Falls, which beautiful little falls. Yeah. I was a little disappointed that the path to like walk down to the falls was closed for construction,

[00:43:01] but you know, yeah, you know, I, I understand why they want to make all these easily accessible paths. And this is something we talked about actually that, that night around the campfire that it is nice that they make these paths easily accessible people. I can understand it for the open looks. I want a little bit of rock scrambling to get down to the falls, even if it's only a couple of miles of scrambling, you know what I'm saying? Phil? Yeah.

[00:43:29] Like I'd like to feel like I earned going down to the falls rather than walk down some stairs. You would have liked fall Creek falls. Probably probably would have loved it. Four and four and a half miles down. That sounds like a good start to the morning. Four and a half miles back up. Yeah. Yeah. When we, when me and my wife went to see rainbow falls in Tennessee, I think it was six miles

[00:43:53] up, but I still say as cool as Tukwamina falls was and the restaurant there was really nice. Yeah, it was. But Kitch to Kimmy that or Kitch to Kippy that y'all skipped out on. Yeah. Bruh. I know. We need to go back to see that. I did. Okay. They're shocking. Kitch to Kippy is, is a freshwater lake that is filled by a couple of them up from a spring. Yeah.

[00:44:22] From the bottom up by a natural spring. And apparently there's a massive copper deposit in the groundwater because the water has this greenish blue tint to it, but it is crystal clear all the way to the bottom. So as they, they, they put us in this, this little, little boat that was like being towed across on a cable. Yeah. And the, the boat has a hole in the bottom. It's basically like a pontoon boat with a, you know, with a, with a clear center.

[00:44:51] And you're looking at fish swimming underneath you. You're, you can see the floor of the lake. It is the creepiest, coolest experience I've had in a long time. Because like, especially down here by like Pond Train and Mississippi and the Pearl, like these and the, and the Tangible river, these rivers are also freaking muddy and full of silt. You can't, you can put your, you can put your arm into that river and can't count your fingers.

[00:45:21] Well, you're at the bottom of the continental flowage. Yeah. But up there, the water was so clear. It was just, it was shocking. I don't know another word for it. And it probably sounds really funny to anybody that's from that part of the country, but it was, it was like being on Mars. It was so completely different from anything I've experienced in South Louisiana. It was a really, really cool experience. Yeah, it was.

[00:45:48] Unfortunately, we weren't able to find any of your wife's rocks that she was looking for with her flashlight. Yeah. Gillian, Gillian went out looking for Yupra rocks and didn't find any. I have assured her that just means we'll just have to go back one day. Just have to go back. Yeah. But it was a good time that evening. You know, we, we knew that, that the next morning we were going to lose a handful of campers. So that night. Right. We went, you know, we went back.

[00:46:13] We, that's when we recorded the round table episode or the fireside episode. You know, we call it different things every year. Yup. Um, we low key bullied Kyle and Victoria into coming on. And I told the two of them, I'm like, Hey, summer camp is like fight club. If it's your first year, you have to fight. I just keyed up my wife to, to grab them and pull them onto the table. It worked out pretty well. Yeah. But they came on and they were a lot of fun. I mean, Victoria is, and Kyle are, they were a lot of fun.

[00:46:43] They are. You know, little, little good people, little on the quiet side. I, I mean, I, I almost got the impression that like, they were a little bit intimidated when they first kind of like came around the corner and said, Hey guys, but we did our absolute best to just welcome them in and fold them in and make them part of the group and make them feel comfortable. Because like, that's the whole, I get it. It's, you know, yeah, they, they've talked to, they've talked to a few of the people in the patron chat and they've talked to you and me in the patron chat back and forth, but they've never met us in person.

[00:47:12] I get it. You know, it's, it's a big group of people. It's a group of people you really don't know. Yeah. You see me and Phil's face and Andrew's face all the time, but you don't see the faces of the other patrons. So you're not really, you don't really recognize them necessarily right off the bat. And there's a pretty good chance everybody in that group was armed. Oh, there's a hundred, a hundred percent chance that at least, at least one member of every family was armed at all times. Like that was, that's just baseline. Yeah.

[00:47:42] So I get it. I get it. Big new group of people, but dear God, did she slay the bread? Oh my God. God was that good. God would eat again many times. Well, in the hilarious part is, is like, so every, and most of y'all had this experience when you get me talking about something that I know a lot about, like coffee or night vision or anything like that. Just me, you and Kyle about reloading when we first got to Mackinac Island. I'm creeping out the normies.

[00:48:09] Just don't make plans for about an hour, an hour, because I'm going to sit there and talk your fricking ears off until I've gotten them a system. That was Victoria with sourdough bread. As soon as someone asked, like you could just see it flow out of her. And it was the coolest thing. Cause I was just like, this little lady has found her niche. She is in, she is going to tell us all about sourdough bread. Cause it's something she knows a lot about and she's passionate about. And you're right. Kyle was the same way.

[00:48:38] Once we got him talking about reloading components, it just, the conversations just flowed and it was so much fun. Oh man. It's, it's like getting together with your high school buddies all over again. This, this trip. Yeah. That's exactly what it is. It's, it's a bunch of people that you have a ton in common with, despite the fact that you've maybe never met them before. Yeah.

[00:49:02] And, and that is to me, that is kind of like the fun part of this is that like, even like, even though it was like our first time meeting each other face to face, I mean, yeah, we talk every week. We do. But, you know, like you and I had hypothesized before we went out there, like either our wives are going to really hit it off or they're going to totally hate each other. Definitely get along well. Definitely get along well. A lot.

[00:49:30] Well, what I came away with was, I was like, okay, probably oh, and the fact that like you and I have somewhat similar personalities in some ways. Oh yeah. The two of them had fairly similar personalities in some ways. It just, it was. Absolutely. It was fun because like, you know, I don't want to say that it's a homogenous group because by no means is it. No. But there's enough commonalities there in terms of like interest, personality.

[00:49:57] I almost want to call it like social confidence as weird as it sounds. Cause like, I don't think it's probably a stretch to say that the majority of us in mixed company are probably like a little more private, keep to ourselves a little more measured, maybe not let all the crazy come out in front of the normies. Sure. But in, but in this bunch, we know we can just let it all out. Oh yeah. And it's fantastic.

[00:50:23] And because of that, there's the, there's this like quiet confidence where it's like, I can let my guard down and be me around all these people. Cause they're just as weird as I am. Yep. In the best possible way. Oh, look, when I call people nerd or dork and all that stuff, that, that is like absolutely a term of endearment with me. Nerds are my favorite people because they are passionate and knowledgeable. Like I love that.

[00:50:52] If, if there is something that you just absolutely cannot get enough of, and you have devoted so much time to learning it, that you are that enthusiastic explaining it to me. Phenomenal. I want everything to do with that because number one, now I don't have to spend all that time learning it because I've learned it all from you. And it's probably something that's pretty cool. Yeah. I mean, I guess that's like when I, when I pull my laptop out and you're like, turn

[00:51:21] around and just let said like, just thumb through all this satellite data and tell me what you think. Oh Christ. I spent 45 minutes digging through your laptop, looking at satellite data. Fortunately, I don't keep the spicy pics on that. That's fine. I don't need those. But yeah, I mean, it's just, I think that is what I love so much about hanging out of this group. Like I said, I've said it before. I will say it every time it will be, it will be a meme or it'll be annoying, but like

[00:51:46] the summer camp trip is the trip I look forward to for like 11 and a half months. Every single year. I am just chomping at the bit to get back out there, pick another place, go see my friends again, go hang out, make those memories, get the kids together for as many years as we can convince all of them to have anything to do with us. Yeah. And they seem to love it. Yeah. I mean, it's like seeing, it's like seeing friends they haven't seen in a long time.

[00:52:14] Those kids, when they got together, not a hesitation. They're all hanging out, goofing off. Heck, your daughter was dissecting critters. Yes. My daughter and Josh is a middle child. I think so. Dissecting minnows because they just want to see what was inside of them. Fair enough. Although true form, my daughter found a minnow that like washed up on a bank. Cause I always told her, I'm like, if you kill it, you have to eat it. She said, but this was already dead when I found it. I'm like, okay, that's fair. Then don't eat it. Don't eat it if it was already dead.

[00:52:44] Not sure how long that had been dead. I'm not sure either, but not long enough to, well, I mean, it was smell fishy, but probably open to what it was. Yeah. But no, I mean, it's not terrible. And the thing of it is, is that like, I can't speak for everybody else, but I know that like my own personality being what it is in mixed company, I never fully relax. Like I'm always like keeping one eye on my wife, when I am my daughter, but in this group,

[00:53:14] I can just take a deep breath and be like, my wife is among friends. My daughter is among friends. Any one of these men or women, if they saw my daughter in distress would not even think twice about running over to go help her out because that's just the people that we assemble for this group. Absolutely. And it, it's, it is a, it is exactly what I always hoped it would be. It is a family. It is a truly family friendly, bring your families out, come and hang out, come and meet your people.

[00:53:43] It is that kind of event. And the only. Please bring your dogs. Cause I want to pet them. Oh yes. All the dogs come. Now my one marginal regret is that we've always restricted this to like patrons and one or two people that we've invited above, you know, in addition to the patrons, but it's pretty much people we've camped with before that. Like we know them, we know they fit into the group. We, we, you know, like there's a couple of exceptions, but people you met at prepper

[00:54:12] camp pretty much. Yeah. And there I've, I've wrestled with this, like some years I'm like, do we open it up more, but then I think to myself, I'm like, but I don't know if opening up more is really the right thing to do. I don't feel like it is. You know, maybe one year at some point we can discuss it and just open it up to listeners generally of the podcast. I don't know that I'd want to open it up further than that because.

[00:54:42] Well, but now that Cypress, now that Cypress survivalist has kind of like gotten legs underneath it. Like those really are available to everyone public facing events. But I kind of feel like the matter of fact, summer camp is probably for the foreseeable future. It's always going to stay that small group. It's always going to stay the patrons and we're going to move it around every year to try to make it a little more convenient for people in different parts of the country. So that hopefully like you didn't make it last year because it was a 12 hour drive, but

[00:55:11] now we're like two hours away from no reason. 12, 12 hour drive. Plus I had no vacation time left over. I, Hey, look, I understand that. I mean, the whole reason why we moved into the summer was because a couple of our, a couple of our campers are teachers and those poor ladies just do not get time off during the school year. Correct. So it's one of those things where like, I would love to tell everybody I'm just a freaking genius.

[00:55:39] And I planned all this out, but most of the history of the matter of facts podcast has been kind of like me saying, let's see if this works or not. And then just going for it. And this camping trip kind of started out the same way. It was, let's try it once and see how it works. And then every year I'm like, well, this was, this worked out much better than I thought it would. So let's keep going. It worked out phenomenally well. I, the only, my only thing I would like to do, and we talked about this at the trip

[00:56:08] is that it would be nice if we could find a campground that had the cabins, had the camping, had the RV parking. So we were all in the same general area. Cause there were a couple of us that had to drive a little bit. Yeah. And, and actually like this year was the first year we had people at different campgrounds. Right. Cause at Lake to gray, you have all that. And at fall Creek falls, we had that row of cabins, but then we had people that were like maybe a quarter mile away that were all. Yeah.

[00:56:38] So this, this year was kind of the first and honestly it was kind of like, it wasn't really pre-planned that we were going to have that we were going to be broken up into three different groups like this. It just kind of happened. Yeah. That it worked out well. Uh, we all, we rented out all, but one of the cabins at this little, at this little resort that we were at those poor people, which was, they were fine with it. They were right down next to us. They had a couple of dogs with them too. I was over petting their dogs the one morning.

[00:57:07] Ah, they seem like nice folks, but yeah, no, I will admit next year. I want to make sure. And, uh, for, for the purposes of the viewership, who's hung out with us for like 57 minutes. So next year we're eyeballing Kentucky. It's not, it's not set in stone yet, but, um, Caroline is doing some looking into looking to see if there's like a state park or something in that area that will fit our needs.

[00:57:36] And like, like you said, her husband did say she was excellent at planning. So we voluntold her to plan. Yeah. I mean, I, I would go so far as say we might've bullied her, but I don't think you can, she seemed enthusiastic. Look, you can't bully that woman doing anything she doesn't want to do. Her person, her personality will not tolerate that. She's a wooden spoon away from being a grandma chasing folks. I'm not even going to insinuate that you refer to her as a grandmother. Cause you might get wooden spoon.

[00:58:06] That's fine. But yeah, we're, we're eyeballing Tennessee. I want to say, and don't say his name on air, but I want to say we have a patron from Kentucky and I could be totally screwed up on that, but I would swear we have a patron from Kentucky. I don't remember where everyone is from. I, I will, I will. If you remind me, I will ask in the patron signal chat after this. Yeah. We've got one and I want to say he's from Kentucky.

[00:58:34] I could be making that up, but I could have swore he was from Kentucky. He's probably from another state and I'm just being an idiot. But anyway, we're looking near about Kentucky. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of things near about Kentucky, unfortunately. Well, yeah. I mean, it is. Yeah. But we're looking at Kentucky. That's going to be a little more central to everyone than Michigan, which Michigan worked out beautifully for the group from Wisconsin, for the two groups from Wisconsin and for you. It did. And it was a two day.

[00:59:04] It was a hump for the rabbit. It was a bender for Phil. Oh, yeah. So we're looking at doing something that's like a day drive for everybody to get there. Caroline's going to do some looking into to see if she can find something that does satisfy all those requirements. Like we have everything from cabins to tents and everything in between. So everybody can get what they want and we all be back together again.

[00:59:29] And I am hoping we can have something worked out within a month or two because we all know that by about September, we need to start making reservations first. Accurate. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, that's in the works. Quite frankly, this is the way the summer camp works is before we leave summer camp, we are already thinking about what to do next year because some part of this has to be preplanned.

[00:59:58] It really does. At Raggle, I appreciate that. But man, I got to find a job down there. Dude. I imagine there are tool makers down there, but. Bruh, oil industry. I do. I know, but I don't want to work for the oil industry. Their stuff is big and heavy. I'm a tool maker. I like small, detailed things that I don't need a forklift for.

[01:00:29] I get it. I get it. I know. I know. Good machine. I got a lot of family here. That's the trouble. Yeah. And your wife has emphatically reminded me on multiple occasions she likes snow and hates heat. So. Yes, that is accurate. She is not very happy with the weather we're currently having. But I mean, our raspberry patch came in great. So we made some raspberry smoothies, raspberry and strawberry smoothies this afternoon, which were fantastic. Yeah.

[01:00:59] No, I gave Rachel a tremendous amount of hell. Good naturely as possible. And I might have I might have cleared the path for you to buy expensive seeing the dark stuff. You're welcome. Yeah. She does think they are very cool. She also thinks I need to finish the bathroom renovation. We're in the middle of it. I mean, I hate to take her. There are holes in walls and the shower is not usable. I hate to take her side in this.

[01:01:27] But since you didn't take my side on the back rub, I will have to take her side in this. That's that's fair. I also would like this bathroom to be finished because. I hate having stuff broken in my house drives me a little bit crazy. I can understand that. Yeah. Well, I don't want to belabor the point. Summer camp was a ton of fun. It is a ton of fun. I can't wait. I can't wait for next year. It is a ton of fun every freaking year.

[01:01:55] And like, I am not upset about the fact that this is at least for the time being the only like podcast affiliated trip we all take. It's this is what I hoped this would turn into. And it has never, ever disappointed me. And every year it's more fun. Like, I don't know what we're going to do when we get to the day where it's like, oh, this this year was kind of a bust. I don't know how we do.

[01:02:24] I don't know how it's going to feel because it hasn't happened yet. Rent a gun range. Can't have a bust for that. Actually, funny you mentioned that. So we actually do have a couple of patrons who have basically offered for us to go and crash at their two conjoined properties. Oh, and they live in the middle of nowhere. So they basically have a private gun range. Well, then. That could be fun.

[01:02:53] But Kentucky, Nick, that might be a that might be a good excuse for us to break out the breaching rounds. I do have a pickup. I could probably bring some doors. Hmm. Hmm. Well, I know that next year, like we're definitely going to stick to we're probably going to stick to Kentucky unless we find a really good reason not to. Fair. Gillian and I. It's very centrally located. It's an easier drive for you guys. It's still not a bad drive for us. Not at all.

[01:03:18] Gillian and I were actually discussing like how possible it would be to have everybody come down to Louisiana one year. But I mean, it's brutally hot in the summer. Done right. And I think right includes mostly cabins with air conditioning for people so that they can cool off at the end of the day.

[01:03:38] So what I was what I was thinking was for something like that, we would almost have to do like Fountain Blue State Park has the group camping where it's basically like a big bunkhouse. But I'm pretty sure it's air conditioned or you'd have to do individual cabins like tent camping down here in the summer is is a suicide mission. Oh, yeah. It's it's not a wise choice at all because you just you're just not going to get any sleep and you're not going to get to recover.

[01:04:08] Yeah. Even if you're pumping liquid IVs every other water bottle, you're going to have problems. Yeah. But even that being said, like she and I talked about it and I was like, OK, well, like there's a bunch of walking path, a bunch of nature trails around here. There's several miles of hiking paths all around Fountain Blue State Park. We could do a day trip up to Bogucheta, which is another state park about an hour and a half away. That's absolutely freaking beautiful.

[01:04:31] And if we wanted to, like, get away from the camp and go go into town to eat, there's literally a we are an hour drive away from New Orleans, which I wouldn't want to take everybody to. But the point is, is that on the North Shore, we can rival New Orleans for good food. Oh, I believe that. So, like, I don't know. It's been something that we've kicked around. I just I don't know logistically if we can make it work because it's just such a it's such a god awful. Oh, yes.

[01:04:59] Raggle Fraggle, a beat a brewery. So there's a I heard brewery. I'm in. So, yeah, a beat of beer is our local brand and it's the brewery is like about five miles away from me. Nice. And matter of fact, they have an affiliated property called the beat of brew pub that's like up in that area. And it's a hell of a good restaurant and bar all by itself. Nice. But, yeah, I mean, there's tons of stuff to do around here. I just I fear that.

[01:05:30] Yeah. See, Stuart's saying it's kind of the same thing I am. Like summer, summertime in South Louisiana. Everyone would have to be OK with cabins, even if it even if in the name of like budgetary issues, a couple of people buddied up in cabins. Like it's just it's too freaking hot down here to tent camp in the summer. It is, which is unfortunate because I'd love to show everybody Louisiana.

[01:05:55] But then, guys, people like y'all and the rains is probably wouldn't even be able to make the drive because it'd be two days driving for y'all to get down here. No, it'd probably be one for us. I think it'd be about one for us. It'd be a long day, but we'd get there. It'd be a long day, bud. It's only like 14 hours. I don't know. There's definitely some some museums and stuff down there by you. That'd be pretty cool to see.

[01:06:23] It would it would entirely depend, I think, you know, and maybe. Oh, maybe we do a winter. Camping trip down there by you guys, it'd still be like 60. It would depend. Well, it would depend on the time of year. I mean, if you go in like November, December and it's not a rainy winter, it's actually really nice down here. Like it's great, great tent camping weather down here in like November, December.

[01:06:50] But the problem is, is that some winters it's very dry and for us very cold. And other years it's like fall. It's warm and it's wet and it's raining constantly. And the mosquitoes are like this freaking big and they're angry. And it's it's just not as pleasant of a trip. Fair. So anyway, but yeah, Kentucky is probably going to be the vibe for next year and starting next show.

[01:07:19] We'll get things back on the rails. I understand that a big, beautiful bill has been passed in the house and anything big and government. I disapprove of. I'm sorry. I didn't use the sarcastic font. You should have. I should. I should have put the air quotes up. Big, beautiful bill. Thank you. I don't know that it in in a week, perhaps we will have some.

[01:07:46] I mean, I have thoughts now, but they're mostly sarcastic. You know what, Nick? Next week, let's let's do some research and let's come back to the show in a week to talk about the big, beautiful bill. And let's bring guys. I'm going to have to make a trip to the distillery because y'all drank most of my booze. I'm not apologizing.

[01:08:12] I actually came home with a full bottle of Knob Creek smoked maple. I just finished the last of that double oak. See, we didn't drink all of it. You drank most of it. I just had a double worth left. That was it, man. I'm going to have to get some more. Also, my wife decided she likes 100% rye bourbon now. So I'm going to have to get a case of that, too. That's because she has good taste. She does have very good taste. I mean, she married me. I knew you were going to say that.

[01:08:42] Thanks for the setup, bud. I appreciate that. Hey, I'm always good for a layup, man. I can't get in the basket, but I can throw it up in the air for you. We'll get it close. That's all that matters, right? Yeah. All right. Let's go ahead and punt this one out the door. In a week, we'll be ranting and raving about politics, and God only knows where we'll go from there.

[01:09:02] But yeah, if you're a patron and you are in the vicinity of the middle of the country, you should probably take this moment in time to either check in with me on Patreon or in the Signal Chat. And if you're not in the patron-only Signal Chat, you probably should be because there's a lot of lunatics. I mean, cool people in there you should talk to. And you should definitely keep your ears open because as soon as we say, this is the spot, usually what I do is I put that in.

[01:09:32] I drop that on Patreon because if you're a patron, you should have access to Patreon. That's kind of how that works. And usually I will also make a quick podcast release about it on the patron-only feed, and then we'll talk about it on this public podcast, and then I'll put it in the Signal Chat. And at some point, if you haven't heard about it, it's because you're just not listening, in which case I'm taking your money and you're not getting anything for it, which I feel a certain way about, but I probably shouldn't.

[01:10:00] Well, you know, we appreciate it either way. Yes. All right. Matter of fact, this podcast is going out the door. There is no outro, so this will be a little jarring, but I promise a little bit more professionalism next week. Good night, everybody. Good night. Good night.