We’re Going on Vacation!
We’re Going on Vacation!
We’re sitting on stools pulled up to the kitchen island. It’s littered with plastic bags, scissors, a marker, and tape, along with many boxes and packages of food. A nearby laundry basket holds more food, individual coffee packets, and an assortment of herbal and medicinal teas. It’s a mess. We’re a mess. We’re going on vacation!
Our preparation has included digging out all our backpacking gear: Dane’s from his last trip moons ago on the Superior Hiking Trail, and mine from three years ago to Isle Royale. Since those trips, items have vanished, batteries have died, and the waterproofing on Dane’s backpack has dissolved.
After loading our basic gear, including two liters of water each, we weigh our packs: 17 and 23 pounds. This includes our sleeping bags, sleeping pads, tent, clothes, toiletries, water filters, headlamps, cooking pots, gas, stove, rain gear, and personal items. Not bad. But we still need to repackage our food and divide it up between the packs.
Last week we made a practice run to White Mound County Park. We put our packs on and walked to the best campsite, then set up our new tent. We affectionately refer to it as our wedding tent because we used an REI gift certificate to purchase it. Over a year ago, when we knew we were going to do the big Isle Royale trip, we decided we’d need a bigger tent. Gone are the days of having to climb over each other to get in and out. The good news is that the wedding tent, although way more spacious, weighs about the same as our previous one.
Once the tent was up, I cooked dinner while Dane arranged the firewood for after dark. Dinner was a hit, and we were able to make sure our stove was still functional, that our headlamps were still working properly, and that we had all the necessary gear for a comfortable night.
After eating and getting cleaned up for bed, Dane lit the fire, and we sat shoulder to shoulder on a picnic table we had moved closer to the firepit. We didn’t see any stars, but behind the clouds we could make out the moon.
In the morning, we broke camp, shoved our gear back into our backpacks, and went for a good hike. We were relieved that the backpack strap didn’t rub on Dane’s defibrillator, and that my backpack didn’t pull on my sore neck. All’s well, we thought as we drove home later that day.
But that was just one night. Now we’re following my itinerary for an eight-day trip to Isle Royale National Park on the Windigo side, which I’ve always dreamed of doing with Dane—and it appears we have 20 pounds of food!
There’s no sense bringing packaging that will weigh us down, take up space in our packs, and create garbage we’ll need to carry out. I look at the inventory, read what I’ve listed for a meal, and find the packages (e.g., dinner 1, Jane’s Delight: Annie’s organic mac and cheese, cut-up sun-dried tomatoes, dehydrated “Just Veggies,” a package of kalamata olives, and water-packed tuna). I open the macaroni box, dump the contents into a plastic bag, and hand it to Dane, who labels it, squishes the air out, and seals the bag before rolling it up.
We don’t need to bring a garbage bag. What little paper we’ll have gets folded up and put into one of the plastic sandwich-size bags, making it easy to pack it in and pack it out.
What we hadn’t expected was the volume of food needed for two adults hiking and carrying their packs for eight days! From experience, I plan on a pound to a pound and a half of food per day per person. With eight days of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we’re shooting for no more than 10 pounds each.
After two hours of sorting, we call it a night and put everything away, wait two days, and pull it out again. Now we get serious, putting breakfast foods in one pile, snack packs (lunch) in another, and sorting dinners by nights.
Happily, we end up vetoing a mound of food we don’t need. With less than a week until we get off the ferry and start hiking, we’re hoping our fully loaded packs will weigh less than 24 pounds for me and less than 30 for Dane.
Not an easy task, but one that will make our trip much more pleasurable. Happy trails!