The plan: (1) Find a good steward for our house. Mr. Huffman, the principal at Toledo High School will take up residence in our absence. (2) Fly to San Diego, take a bus to Campo, CA on the Mexican/US border and spend 90 days hiking north (in retirement we can only afford to fly one way, we have to walk back ;-) ).
The preparation: There are two ways to solve the getting food to eat while on the trail problem, (1) Gather food from stores near the trail as we hike north or (2) Buy and prepare all the food before the trip, package it, box it and find a kind soul to mail it to post offices encountered along the route.
Both techniques have their advantages and draw backs. (1) requires little preparation but lots of time hitchhiking to local towns and shopping in stores for foods appropriate for the trail. (2) requires tons of preparation, but once the food is packaged and prepared, one only needs to pick it up at the post office or local business and get back on the trail. We chose option (2) and have spent the last month buying food, drying food, measuring out portions, bagging and organizing. It is a ton of work, but hopefully we will feel it is worth it once on the trail.
We hope to be on the trail for about 90 days; what Sally and I refer to as our "90 day spa trip". All the food for the 90 days had to be purchased in advance, portioned, prepared, bagged and distributed to boxes addressed to the various post offices enroute. It presents a problem. What if we hike slower than we plan and run out of food before we get to our next resupply? Or, what if we hike faster than we plan and end up carrying extra food that keeps accumulating with each additional food pickup? To alleviate these predicaments we have enlisted Sally's sister to meter out our food into the mailing boxes and send them off a week before we are due to arrive at the next pickup location. This way we can call, text or email her, letting her know how much food to put in the box to supply us for the next leg of our journey.
I am sitting in my living room surrounded by 90 gallon sized zip lock bags stuffed with food. Each bag represents a day's calories-1 bag for each day of the trip. It is a lot of food (3 months for two people worth) and represents a fair expenditure of money and time.
What is in those bags, you might ask? What are you going to eat? We have 4 different breakfasts-Oatmeal, Cream of Wheat, freeze dried scrambled eggs and granola-each with side additives to make them more calorific and/or tasty (walnuts, brown sugar, powdered milk). Lunches rotate through 5 selections: Triscuits with cheese, Pilot Bread with PB&J, Tortillas with humus, Wheat Thins and cheese and "fancy" crackers with salmon or tuna. Again, fruit snacks, mixed nuts, powdered Gatorade, dried apples, dried bananas and almonds add flavor and calories. 13 different dinners grace our menu: Curry rice with chicken, mashed taters with hamburger gravy, Parmesan Couscous, Alfredo Noodles with salmon, Sweet and Sour Pork (Mtn House Freeze Dried), Cheddar and Broccoli Soup, Parmesan Noodles, Chicken Soup with Dumplings, Pine Nut Couscous, Chicken and Mashed Potatoes, Mac and Cheese, Broccoli-Cheese-Rice and Top Ramen. To supplement these main courses we have dried 20 lbs of broccoli, 20 lbs of carrots and 6 lbs of spinach-no calories but good nutrition. For calories and protein we added nuts, beef jerky, olive oil, pudding (twice a week) and muffins or biscuits every night.
You might have the same question I did, "How do you cook muffins on the trail?" No campfires are allowed. No dutch ovens (heavy). Mix the muffin mix in a plastic bag, put 3/4" of water in the pot, put a 1" spacer in the bottom of the pot to keep the plastic bag out of the water and boil the muffin mix in the bag for the prescribed time on the package. Amazingly, it works great! To save fuel we made a "cozy" for our pot from closed foam sleeping pad material. Once we boil the water we can move the pot off the stove and into the cozy and the cooking will take place sans fuel. Pretty darn cool!!
Okay, enough. If we make it the 90 days we will have lots of time to write about the preparations and the trip and you will have ample sleep inducing reading to ward off the most virulent insomnia. We are a week away from takeoff. I will keep you posted.
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