Food, food, food

Only 47 days to go until we start the trail.  We are continuing to run the dehydrator, tonight is 9 trays of refried beans (rehydrate and put on a tortilla for lunches-it's not too bad!).  We have been doing green peppers, and will be moving on to ground beef.  Once those are done we will have enough ingredients to make more meals for the trip.  We have about 50 made so far, not including some soups and the refried beans.  Not sure how many to make, but know that what we have is not enough.

New Gear Test

Picked a night it was supposed to get below freezing and went to Shirley Creek to spend the night in the woods.  This was the first time our new tarps were set up with our hammocks, so we wanted to make sure everything worked together.  This was also the first time we slept in our Speer 20-degree down sleeping bag "Pea Pods", which wrap around the outside of the hammock.  These will be replacing our 8 year old 50-degree Pea Pods, which have served us well.

 I still need to seam seal the tarps.

 Also a first for this trip was loading and carrying our new Ray-Way backpacks.  They had plenty of room and for only walking a couple of miles they seemed to carry just fine.  One nice feature is that they have a wider shoulder strap than most commercial made packs.

 

More Sewing

Wind pants?  Pattern from thru-hiker.com  This was a test pair.

Sewing

December 2012 - Sewed a Ray-Way backpack for Wander after I completed mine.  I barely got it done in time but was able to box it up as a Christmas present.

It weights about 9 oz, less than half of our old backpacks.

Dehydrator

We have decided to supplement our diet on the trail by sending ourselves dehydrated food from home.  Vegetables and some pre-made meals, stuff that we can't buy in the towns along the way.  I won't be mailing myself GORP.  Aiming to supply about 50% of our food for the trail.

Mushrooms ready to dry.

Ray-Way Backpack

November 2012- Sewed a Ray-Way backpack kit that I purchased online.  2600 cu in, similar in design to the Breeze, only larger.  Less than half the weight of our current packs.

Survival of the Sheltowee

The beginning of the trail.

We successfully made it the 144 miles to McKee, KY and have been home for nearly a week.  Twelve days in the woods went way too fast.  The day before we planned to leave, I found out my bank account had some fraudulent charges so I had to cancel my debit card.  I took some cash with me and a credit card that I would later learn was expired.  Along the hike at one gas station along the way we debated if we could afford a hamburger and still have enough money to buy gas for the way home.  We ended up getting two double cheeseburgers.  When we got home I had $0.81 left in my pocket and less than 1/4 tank of gas!

The trail in Pickett State Park.

 Overall the hike went relatively well.  We tried out some new gear, taste-tested some new backpacking recipes, and tried to remember what it was like to have nothing to do but walk.  The trail was easy compared to the AT, but had several areas with challenging blowdowns, the biggest challenge on the southern half of the trail.  The latter part of our hike contained more road walking and following ATV trails.  Other than one confusing section north of Cumberland Falls, the trail was well marked.

Wander demonstrates proper fording technique.

 We had to ford four streams along the way, not to mention the dozens of smaller streams that we could walk across.