First of all, THANK-YOU all who responded to our post re: trips and camping.
We have gotten so much valuable info from this list.
 
The other day, we decided to give the camping a try, here's what happened.
We loaded Jasper's travel carrier with a little litter pan (a small tin
baking pan), some water in a dish, a little food.  Not fifteen minutes into
the trip, he had mangled the litter pan and spilled all of his food and
water.  We stopped a short while later and cleaned up the mess.  From there,
we offered Jasper water through his water bottle regularly, seemed to work
much better.  He still crunched the litter pan, but oh well.  An hour and a
half into the trip, he got real anxious in his carrier.  Lots of scratching
at the sides, and running in circles.  We pulled over and put on his halter
and leash, sure enough, a couple of minutes of running around and it was
poop and potty time.  So much for the litter pan.  We decided to leave it in
the carrier in case, but looks like we will just have to pull over and let
him go out side when ever he gets anxious like that.  --- Got to our camp
site around 7:00 pm, so it was nice and cool.  We set up his main cage in
the back of the truck for the night.  He sat quitetly in my lap sniffing the
mountain air for a while, then I put him to bed.  He played a bit, but was
asleep when we crawled in for the night.  4:00 am PARTY TIME!  He wakes up
and figures hey, if I'm up, so should they.  What a ruckus!  Banging toys,
draging his litter pan around, scratching at the cage, etc.  When I turned
on a light to see what was up, he looked up at me with one of those ferret
looks, like "Oh are you up?  Time to play!!!" Needless to say, not much
sleeping was done from around 4-5 am untill he went back to sleep.  Next
trip, We think we will ferret proof the front of the truck, and let him
sleep there for the night so we can sleep.
 
The next day: The morning was cool, so no problems there.  The afternoon got
quite warm, so when we went fishing he came along.  We were able to find
nice shadey, cool, and safe places along the creek to put his carrier.  He
seemed to enjoy the whole thing.  Looked around for a while, lots of
sniffing, and of course, slept.  We had to leave to come home around 5:00pm,
he pooped once before we left, and slept the whole 2 and a half hours trip.
 
So there you have it, Jasper's big (and first) trip.  Again, we really
appreciate all of you who wrote us.  His next adventure comes next week when
I take him on an eight hour road trip.  Wish us luck.
 
Brett & Missy
and Jasper toooooo
[Posted in FML issue 1631]