It has become a new tradition to go camping the weekend before Thanksgiving to celebrate our friend Thomas’s birthday. We usually head to Kettle Moraine State Forest South in Wisconsin. As long as you bundle up enough, it’s a lot of fun to camp in cold weather. For one, you don’t have to worry about bugs AT ALL. Also, you don’t need to worry about filling your cooler with ice; your beer will stay nice and cold on its own.

The annual cold camping trip includes a huge birthday feast. Since daylight hours are limited, the cooking begins as soon as everyone wakes up on Saturday morning. As we drink Bloody Marys and New Glarus beer, we prepare food all day long using the campfire, a smoker, Coleman grills, and even a hibachi. This past trip’s menu included a bacon-wrapped turducken, sauerkraut with Nueske’s bacon, yams, vegetarian curry, cranberries, stuffing, potatoes, dinner rolls, and plenty of beer and Jameson to wash it all down.

With plenty of layers bundling us up, we stayed warm by the fire and toasty in our sleeping bags.

As the indicator on the smoker shows, it was an ideal weekend.