Beloved Relatives Beat Us There!

Dan and Heather sent us this pic from their biking travels. Looks like we'll have to hike quickly to catch up!

I watched a program about the history of the Appalachians last night on Detroit Public TV. Lots about the civil war, logging, coal mining. Really interesting stuff. The coal mining bits made me really appreciate labour unions and environmental laws these days. (well, practically everything about history makes me appreciate the now).

Food Packages Away!

This weekend we drove down to Ryden's to mail off our food packs. 9 boxes in total. We were expecting to pay about $500 and were pleased to discover that it topped out at about $150. Apparently FED-EX loves us. No trouble getting through the border as Em was smart enough to call ahead and have them expect us. The Ryden's folks were very kind and patient as we hauled in two months worth of food boxes and went a little crazy with the packing tape.

Here you'll find pics of us doing food prep. The vacuum bagging machines that we tried didn't work too well so it ended up being me trying not to inhale too much icing sugar as we removed the air with a straw.

Delicious Dehydrated Delicacies (aka Fighting with the Dehyrator)

Emily has been slaving night and day over the dehydrator and can be seen, pictured above, on one of her therapeutic "throw the dehydrator off the balcony" sessions.

Yesterday we racked up $750 worth of groceries by tearing through the bulk zone. Yay for dehydrated skim milk!!! The food might not be the most delicious but, for long distance hikers, we will be eating well. We even managed to find some salmon that doesn't need to be refrigerated, which should make an exciting treat.

Our First Foray...

White dudes and gang signs.. G-G-G Gang Signs! (inside joke... or just see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKTDRqQtPO8 to get the joke).

A beautiful day in Thunder Bay found us loading up our packs with 40 and 30 pounds apiece (that's 18 and 14 kg) and taking a 3 mile (4.8 km) jaunt around the city. Mainly we wanted to try our packs out and enjoy some sunshine. We mounted the stairs to hillcrest park and then down to the marina. Lots of people outside enjoying the sunshine, and the change in season is certainly getting us excited to be active. The packs felt great and so did we.

Turns out Em is an all-star healer and is moving around perfectly, with just a bit more stiffness and tiredness (is that a word?) in her left leg.

Get out there and drink up Spring people!!

P.S. Right near the main dock at the marina they seem to have some pumps that agitate the water, likely to keep the ice at bay. Anyone know the purpose?

The Packs Arrive!!!!!!!!!!

The 2nd most exciting part of our trip! (The first being something to actually do with hiking ((or for 1/2 of our daring duo, something that rhymes with Wolonial Cilliamsburg)).

We went to the Chaltrek/Ostrom Outdoors store to pick up our new packs for the hike. Very exciting! I've been using nothing but Ostrom packs since about grade 10 but I've never lived out of one so this will be a bit different. Bill put in some extra pouches for our camel packs so no hauling out the nalgenes for us! We got the staves bent to our back shapes and a helpful lesson on how to properly pack the mass (Mass being a better choice of word then weight, because mass means "matter" and weight means "force" - that's a take-home lesson right there folks).

Emily chose a gorgeous combination of teal and pink for pack colours inspired by 80's workout spandex. At least our packs can't be mistakenly picked up by anyone else.

(Note: Yes, I am eating properly, and I don't have a tapeworm. I'm just built skinny like that.)