I’m packing today for Delmarva this weekend and then Raystown after. As I was loading the stakes that “Raystown veterans” told me to buy my first year there, I thought it would be helpful to post the same advice for anyone coming this year for the first time.
The huge gravel pads are constructed for enormous RVs. Normal plastic and aluminum stakes are hard to drive into the pads (the ground around the pads isn’t much better), are usually damaged doing so and hold poorly when the wind comes up.
Buy the 10" nails used for landscaping ties at Home Crapo or an equivalent home supply center. They really work for staking down your tent and fly-about .65 ea.
Dave
Second that!
I witnessed a MSR “Rock Breaker” plastic stake shatter and spread like shrapnel while being driven home.
Jim
and bring a 2 or 3 lb sledge
Uncle Albert always used to say,
“Don’t force it. Use a bigger hammer.”
I like the 10" nail style tent stakes- a very small bit more moolah, but they come with that plactic doohickey that retains the loop better, and gives something to grab when pulling the stake out.
My .$02
Have fun!
Kaps
Loop on stakes
The commercial stakes with the plastic tab on top with a loop for pulling them out are more convenient when it’s time to pull them out.
I was referring to the 10" construction nails used in nailing landscaping ties together. Cheap and very strong.
Either would be better than the stakes supplied with tarps and tents.
Dave
Go into business
– Last Updated: Oct-01-09 11:29 AM EST –
On your trip to HD..buy a box . There are bound to be some people who have trouble..
LOL you could probably sell for $1.50 a spike.
Raystown sounds too hard for me. I prefer the soft pine needle clad ground of the Allagash.
Now if you moved that event to another weekend that is NOT prime leaf season..I might go torture myself on hard unyielding surfaces.
Getting Spoiled
I’m bringing my camper this year. It’s small with minimal amenities, including a queen sized bed, two burner stove and guaranteed dry no matter what. Oh and did I mention, no stakes to drive in.
Marc Ornstein
Dogpaddle Canoe Works
Custom Paddles and Cedar Strip Canoes
your Camper
Mark,
As David Bromberg sings, “You have to suffer ----if you want to sing the blues”
Dave
Careful Marc
It might be bad form to mention a shelter system having wheels and rubber tires that depend on air pressure in a thread that is primarily about driving sharpened metal stakes into un-yielding surfaces.
Just sayin’.
Jim 
Good advice!
I am still in therapy to heal the psychological wounds inflicted when I tried to bang in my aluminum tent stakes with my steel coffee cup.
-rs
Raystown Tent Peg Blues
Well, I gotz there real early!
Yes sir, I beat the mad damn crowd!
Prime lakefont site with a grand vista!
Nows I ain’t feelin’ all too proud!
Ya see it’s a sundowner of 6:30,
and Ize ain’ts erected me ample shelter,
for thems mean 40-knotters came a callin’,
Big Agnes she’s blown from hel-ta-skelter!
CHORUS
When Army Corps’ engineerin’,
NO BODIES gonna lay ‘emselves…softly down!
Least not when it’s crushin’ cold concrete fact,
this pad’s impenetrable hostile ground.
(What’s that cry’n sound?)
Jsaults over in 22,
dodgin’ Rockbuster schrapnel as it shatters.
I hear him say, “This Hennesey will do!”
as over in 23 more plastic shards now scatter.
Riverstider across in 26,
like some mad beggar on his knees,
bangs his cup for all its worth,
howls less-than-God-blessin’s chorus to the breeze!
CHORUS
When Army Corps’ engineerin’,
NO BODIES gonna lay ‘emselves…softly down!
Least not when it’s crushin’ cold concrete fact,
Ray’s Town’s impenetrable hostile ground!
(What’s that cry’n sound?)
What doesn’t destroy us, makes us…
stronger. Or just plain crazy. I’ll have to send Hop out for some of those big nails.
On a side note, Hop and I are bringing those goofy big air mattresses this year. Our Big Agnes sleep systems are plenty nice for regular camping on nice pine forest floors. But, Raystown camping is anything but that.
And oh, it wouldn’t hurt to being a shelter tarp. And bring toilet paper. The bathrooms have been known to run out.
A word to the wise: come prepared.
Boom Boom! Ain’t it great to be?
If any poor weary weepin’ soul should come stumblin’ into my site, ragged arms danglin’ from out of slumped shoulder sockets with quiverin’ fists clutching’ hand-hammered mini-woks (formerly known as the tres chic Titanium Forester Cup), or perhaps their personnage pithed per porcupinesque piercings of post-pounded palings, I shall do what ever I might - loan a stray mallet or imperial roof gutter nail, offer ibuprofen and whisky or sudsy libation - to assuage, or a sausage, the pain, the pain, Will Robinson, of a poor pilgrim whom has been crushed by the crusher run, only to then find an ensuing Sisyphian Folly of existential P-netted trap (or crap) befallen to them, for having slogged their burdens up the hill so they might be dumped into the abyss of things alimentary amiss, it is not a rolling rock that strays their way, but a music roll not round to play.
It’s tuff tooz bees da paddler! Ain’t it?
Oh! And later, upon Pullin’ Up the Stakes Day! Should your extractions prove a tad difficult, tie a wee chunk of oak or cherry to the peg. I’ll send the canine lad around to tormen…er, assist in your peggly levitations.
Thomas - Chronic Canine and Crusher-run Sufferer
A modest proposal
Since all of the sites are electric, can anyone bring a hammer drill for tent peg pilot holes?
Jim
LOL
Who woulda known civilization would be so rough!
Gotta go sharpen my saw for dem balsam branches.
Soft bed aaah…
(yes its permissible in the north woods.)
Bringing my camper to R-Town
the only stakes I’ll have are edible. Make mine Porterhouse.