Less than 1 Week to Go!!

In less than a week, Shawn and I will be hitting the trail! Over the past week, we’ve been prepping our gear, pretending to workout, and eating SUPER healthy food. (YEAH RIGHT! lolz)

What do you bring on such a hike? Not much. You want the necessities, but you also want to be light. Especially in the desert where you have to carry a lot of weight in water because water sources are further apart. Generally, those trying to hike “light” try to keep their base weight (pack weight without food and water) under 15 lbs. This is our game. Shawn has a detailed list of his gear in another post.

And here’s a pic of my gear:

Besides getting our gear prepped, we’ve also been prepping some resupply boxes to send ourselves along the trail. To resupply food along the trail, people use one of three methods: (1) mail drops (to post offices or other businesses in towns along/near the trail that kindly hold hiker mail), (2) buy food in trail towns along the way, or (3) a combination of methods 1 and 2.

We are using method (3) and only prepping a couple of mail drops to be sent from home. The first of these we actually put in the mail ourselves this morning to be picked up in Warner Springs, around mile 109 along the trail. This leaves only one resupply box for my mom to mail us while we are on trail. Thanks Mom!!

For the remainder of our resupply, we will buy food in towns along the way, or – for towns where we know that resupply options are limited or non-existent – we will prep boxes ahead in towns that have a good supermarket and mail them ahead to ourselves to pick up when we arrive.

Each method has different pros and cons, but what we like about buying and sending along the trail is we will have a much better idea of what we need and what we want as we hike, and it places less responsibility on your support person(s) back home that ultimately have to mail all your boxes on a schedule that may change as you hike. Many people end up getting sick of the foods they packed themselves in their resupply boxes, and often pack too much or too little food in their boxes. This means they are either wasting money on excess food that will end up as give-aways in hiker boxes or they have to go to the grocery store to supplement their resupply, which defeats the purpose of mailing yourself boxes in the first place.

Speaking of food… knowing that we will soon be burning more calories per day than we can possibly consume, we haven’t exactly been watching what we eat. It’s actually a good idea to carry a little extra weight into the trail with you. We’ve taken this to heart and have been busy eating as many tacos and donuts as we want. Special shout-out to some Okoboji area favorites: Los Pueblos, Taco House, and Spudnutz!

We’ve also spent some time at our favorite local watering hole, WestO Brewery. While I am not a beer drinker, I do love a good brewery, and this one should be on your list! I’ll be repping them on the trail with their sweet trucker hat.