I'm not a collector but I guess I do have a multiple number of some items. It's not because I'm a collector. I just can't resist a good deal, even if I already have several of them! That would explain why I have, five camp stoves, eight coffee pots.....
Look at the little golfing fanatics. They have a whole bag full of clubs, don't they? And what about all those short sleeve golfing shirts? They have enough of them to wear three different ones per day for the rest of their life!
So I can semi rationalize that you may need more than one of the same item. For instance tents. I need two backpacking tents for me and my daughter, one for 2-3 day jaunts and another for week long elk hunts. So that's four. I think I have six though.
So that said, I thought it'd be a fun topic if I talked about coffee pots. There's something magical about the outdoors and coffee isn't there? They go together like a hand in a glove. Dipping a pot of water out of the river is a morning ritual. Throw it on the fire and soon it's spitting out a steady stream of steam and is ready to get you jump started for the day. No camp would be complete without a banged up coffee pot on the fire pit? If camp life centers around the camp fire then the coffee pot is the magnet.
If coffee is a necessary ingredient to camp life, obviously any old coffee pot won't do. No siree. It takes a special one. I used money off of my first bull riding winnings (or maybe it was my first bareback winnings) to buy wood to build my first camp box. For Christmas, mom and dad gave me some utensils to fill my box.
One item was a white enameled coffee pot. I used it for years on up through my college days. I still have it stashed away in the garage. As I've gotten older, my collection has expanded. I have a small pot that I use for backpacking. It's a lightweight aluminum one that's easy to carry. To conserve space when backpacking, I stuff items inside of it.
I like a coffee pot when backpacking. I know hardcore backpackers use their little light weight pots to boil their water in but you can use a coffee pot to sterilize drinking water, heat water for oatmeal, backpacking meals and of course your morning coffee. If I use it to sterilize drinking water I set the pot in the river to cool down before transferring it to my water bottle. In the morning I always heat up a pot of water and leave it in camp. That way if we get back to camp thirsty we have some water that we can guzzle down.
Ninety percent of the time I use motel coffee packs when outdoors. Especially when backpacking because they're easier to pack than coffee grounds and I don't need the stem/filter. Also, that way everyone can make their coffee as strong or as weak as they like.
The next necessary coffee pot will be the one in your camp box. A medium sized one works best for me. Years of cooking over a fire or on your old Coleman stove will blacken the pot and it will deposit black smoot on your plates. Therefore I wrap it in a plastic grocery sack when it's going back into my camp box or backpack.
The third pot you ought to have is a big one for large groups. Otherwise you'll be refilling/heating your pot every two seconds. I got my big one years ago when I had some elk hunters flying in from Georgia. I don't use it that often but for large groups it's nice.
Over time you'll grow attached to your old pot. The one I keep in my camp box is one dad had in the old farm house. We'd sleep in it in that old house in the winter when up there building fence as kids. Long after dad had died my daughters and I were digging through the old fallen down house and found it. I had to use a radiator clamp to keep the handle attached but it works fine. That just adds character to it.
Be careful when putting a hot pot into the river to cool off though. Once I didn't let mine cool down enough and the glass bulb on top shattered. In fact, I don't have but maybe four coffee pots with a bulb left. They all get broken or lost. I wish they'd design something else for the bulb other than glass.
So you can see, it's impossible to narrow it down to one coffee pot for all of your outdoor needs. Do you really need eight? Well maybe not, but what am I supposed to do when I'm exploring around an old miners cabin in the mountains and find an old coffee pot? Throw it in my backpack of course! Then we'll up to number 9!!!
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