Today is Tuesday, November 20th. We are currently in Michigan staying at my mom's house (Gail) through Thanksgiving and a bit after that. We have been preparing food and supplies while we are here. The plan is to have my mom ship the things we have prepared for the second half of the trail and MerryCline's mom (Merry) will ship the stuff we need for the first part of the trail. It has been pretty humorous seeing all the stuff MC has been dehydrating. My mom has a 5 tray dehydrator and we have a 9 tray. So all 14 trays have been going non stop for about a week now. We have almost everything together that we will need for my mom, but with the time constraints it has been difficult to balance between getting everything ready for the boxes and spending time with my friends who I won't see for another year unless they come to join us for a section of the trail. We are making it work though.
So today's tasks of preperation involve vacuum sealing bacon in my moms FoodSaver. We need to put the finishing touches on a couple of the dinners. MC has found an ingenious way to keep our chips and crackers from crumbling. Most of our stuff is shoved in ziplocks, but she has been collecting pringles cans because they are light weight and keep our chips safe, so we need to fill those up today too.
Most of our boxes are made of supplies that we think we will need while on the trail that we can't get when we go into town, or that we only need a couple of instead of buying a full package. Then there is the food. We decided to make most of our meals to cut down on cost. Some of them look very delicious and others look like they could be a bit rough, but we are excited either way. We are going to freeze the dehydrated meals we have prepared in hopes that they will stay good until 8 months from now when Gail starts shipping them.
Even with all the food we have been making, we figure it will only be about half of the food we will eat while on the trail. The plan is that we will receive a package about every 2 weeks with a weeks worth of food in it and supplies that will last us as long as we can make them last. Once our food from the box runs out we plan to hike a distance by then that will put us close to a town that we can go into to pick up food at a grocery store. Realistically, we will also be shopping at gas stations or anywhere that we can get sustenance for parts of the trail, but from the research we have done it is possible to hike the whole trail without shipping anything. Its just more expensive and you don't get freshish baked cookies and cinnamon rolls from your loving mothers if you do it that way.
I get it that someone who wasn't planning on spending 6 months of their lives in the woods wouldn't understand why we are starting our food prep 4-5 months before we even start hiking, but that is what is required for the hike we want to hike. We are very excited that the time is so close!! We have been dreaming and planning for this experience for about 2 years now. We can't wait.
So this blog will serve as a way to stay in touch with our friends and let everyone know how we are coming with the preparation. I don't think we will blog every day, but it will be good practice for when we are on the AT so that we can keep up with all of you wonderful people. We could never do something this epic if we didn't have the friends and family that supports us. We live an amazing, exciting, wonderful, blessed life and want to take advantage of every minute of us. We hope y'all enjoy following us in our adventures. Any positive feedback and support will be graciously accepted. Love you all.
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