Wandering Where We’ll Be

It’s Monday morning, and we’re in Cumberland Gap National Historical Park near Middlesboro, KY.  It’s a beautiful day, with the clouds that were around earlier with the sunrise having moved out.  We’re going to stay in the park for another night, so we don’t have to break camp today.  We showered up, had oatmeal for breakfast, and we’ll soon be heading out to do some hiking in the park.

I thought I’d write a bit about how we packed for a long camping trip like this.  We have a small truck with a topper, and most of our gear/food is in plastic totes – each containing items that are – more or less – similar in function.

Well, Dan’s back from the shower, so I’ll have to finish this later.

Continuing while traveling between Cumberland Gap and Asheville, NC…

For example, we have the large “tent” tote.  This contains the tent and most of what goes in it once it’s set up: sleeping pads, sleeping bags.  There’s actually a second tent in this tote, as well.  The first tent is my Eureka Wind River, a 2-3 person tent that has room for our two sleeping bags, each of our clothes bags and Jake’s sleeping pad and sleeping bag, which is actually more like a square pita, with two open sides.  The other tent (an REI Half-Dome) is smaller and will be used when we want to do a backpacking trip, where we’ll be away from the truck for a couple nights or more.  Actually, we might have to use this tent before we do any backpacking.  The door zipper on my Wind River, which – I figured – is on its fourteenth year, is beginning to fail.  We might be able to replace the zipper pull, and all will be fine.  In the meantime, I think we’ll use the Half-Dome.  It has less floor space inside, but has vestibule areas – one on each side – that can be used to keep shoes, etc.  We’ve used this tent with Jake before, and it works fine.

Then, we have three “food” totes.  The first contains the larger dry and canned food items (e.g. pasta, rice, pancake mix, vegetable oil, syrup, etc.).  The second contains smaller items, like canned soup, baked beans, quick noodle/rice dishes (mostly for backpacking), lentils and other small dried beans, nuts, raisins, etc.  The third tote is a smaller tote we’re using for our beverage mixes (instant coffee, teas, and hot chocolate), snacks and bread/buns.  We also have a small container filled with the most commonly used herbs and spices; it hasn’t found a permanent home, yet, but I hope to find room for it in one of the food totes soon.

The “kitchen” tote holds all of our cookware, small cutting boards, cooking utensils, plates, bowls, cups, silverware, kitchen towels and wash cloths, dish soap and extra ziploc bags.

The “equipment” tote contains a real mix of camping gear, including the larger griddle that doesn’t fit in the kitchen tote, popcorn popper for over the campfire, gas lantern, kitchen tarp and rope, backpacking stoves and fuel bottles, and hat and mittens for possible cold weather in the mountains.

Another, un-named tote holds each of our backpacks, two different sizes of day-packs and our lightweight sleeping bags.

We also have a small tote with all kinds of car repair stuff.

Then, for gear that is not in totes, we have our clothes bags – one each; Jake’s bag with leashes, cable, food and water dishes and dog treats; dog food; two-burner stove and propane tank; firewood and extra drinking water.

In the truck cab, we have maps, campground guide, books, journals, snacks, water, CDs, laptop and camera.

Well, we’re almost to Asheville, NC, so I’ll end here.

Tim

That’s what Dan exclaimed as he closed the door to the storage area, slid the door latch into place and secured the latch with our combination lock. I ran out of the storage building, closed the tailgate and back and driver-side topper windows, jumped into and started the truck. Dan was close behind, closing the main, storage building door, as well as the passenger-side topper window, before jumping into the truck. The clock on the truck radio read “8:57”; if the clock was accurate, we had 3 minutes to drive to the main, storage facility gate and punch in the code that would open the door. After 9 p.m., we’d be locked into the storage facility and would need to call the police to let us out. We reached the gate; Dan jumped out of the truck with the gate-code card in hand, ran over to the keypad and punched in the code. The gate opened!

We both had the last three days of the month off from work. I was done with work, and Dan was using his last three personal days from work so we could finish packing, moving and cleaning. Then, he just had to work Saturday and Sunday, and he would be done with work, as well. Three days would certainly be plenty of time to accomplish this task, we thought. As I mentioned before, we sold a lot of our stuff at a garage sale we had at my parent’s place last fall. And, now, we already had quite a few boxes packed and ready to go in our basement storage area. For the most part, the wall hangings and things we don’t use on a daily basis, like our better dishes, glasses and serving trays, were all packed. Besides, our two-bedroom apartment was beginning to look rather empty. We had our piano moved to our friend, Shawn’s apartment, where he will be keeping it for us and, hopefully, getting some use out of it. And, my parents stopped by Wednesday morning to pick up our bed (now theirs) to bring up to their cabin in northern Minnesota.

So, we did some more packing and cleaning Wednesday morning and early afternoon. Then, we walked to a nearby coffee shop to test the Wi-Fi on our laptop, check email and do a few last-minute address changes. I had called our Internet Service Provider the previous day to cancel our service. After providing my name, I heard the woman at Pixius looking up my account in the system. I verified my name and address, and was expecting her to ask me when I wanted our service cancelled when she said matter-of-factly, “OK, it’s all taken care of.” “So, it’s effective immediately?” I asked. “Yep.” “OK, thanks.” We only had three days left, so I just let it go. Plus, it would give us a chance to test our Wi-Fi. While it took a few failed attempts and learning how the JiWire software I had downloaded worked, we eventually got connected and took care of our business.

Wednesday evening, Dan went to his weekly role-play gaming session, and I worked on packing our food for our upcoming camping trip. This was much more difficult than packing for previous — and, much shorter — trips we have done. For shorter trips, I can plan for a handful of main meals and fill in with basic breakfast foods and sandwiches and snacks for lunches. But, for this trip, I had to make sure that I had all of the basic staples, such as — among many others– sugar, oil, rice, flour, as well as some prepared foods, like soups and easy rice/noodle dishes, for quicker meals. I had also put together last weekend a small container of the most commonly used herbs and spices, such as salt, pepper, basil, oregano, chili powder, cumin, curry, cinnamon, etc. My thinking was that we’d be on the road for about two and a half months, so we should be prepared to make a variety of meals. I would certainly get bored eating the same soup or rice dish everyday. And, to make our money last as long as possible, we’re planning on eating out as little as possible. We definitely want to sample the local fare in the areas through which we’ll be traveling, but it won’t be an everyday affair.

On Thursday, we made one trip out to my parents’ place in Shakopee and a trip to the 5′ x 10′ storage unit we rented in Burnsville. We also stopped in Eagan to visit Dan’s mom. She was having some problems with her computer and I also needed to install a memory upgrade that she had purchased. I think we got the computer issues resolved; we had lunch and I received a birthday present from Dan’s mom and dad — a nice fleece jacket.

Friday morning, we took another load out to Shakopee, including Jake. When we’re packing and loading things into the truck, he just gets all nervous, worrying that he’ll be left behind. So, we decided that he would stay in Shakopee for the rest of the day. We went back to the apartment and got the bulk of the cleaning done — me, in the kitchen, and Dan, in the bathroom and bedrooms. Then, we made another trip to the storage area, but we hit afternoon “rush-hour” traffic on the way back to the apartment. We knew we had two more loads for the storage unit and then one last one for Shakopee. I would bring a load to the storage unit while Dan did some of the final cleaning. This worked out fine, but by the time I had returned to the apartment, it was getting to be almost 8.

We loaded the futon, our only large piece of furniture that we kept, and several other small items and headed for the storage unit, arriving with about twenty-five minutes to go before 9, when the gates would automatically lock us in. That should be plenty of time. But, we apparently weren’t the only late movers that evening. Two women were loading things into the unit directly across from ours and some of their belongings were in the aisle blocking the door to our unit. After we told them that we needed to get into our unit, they shifted their stuff around and we began to carry the smaller items we had into the facility. Now, our unit was beginning to get pretty full, so we had to pull out some things and rearrange to make room for the futon. Our boxes were on a couple of pallets that we had from our storage area at the apartment, but there was a strip along the long side of the unit with bare concrete, and we wanted to put something under the futon, which we would be standing on end. I knew I had tarps in the tote that contained the camping items that we wouldn’t be bringing with us on the trip. I went to find them, but ran across something better — one of the old “Ridge Rest” sleeping pads. I put the pad in place and we maneuvered the futon frame and pad into the storage unit. It fit! But, we’re running out of time and we have to get a few things back in; the last item — a LONG box of Dan’s comics. I tried a spot; no, it won’t fit there. Dan had an idea; great, that works. Let’s get out of here!

After getting out of the main, storage area gate just in time, we went back to the apartment to do the final cleaning and get most of the last items. But, the bikes weren’t going to fit and we still needed to fill nail holes. We knew that the landlord didn’t have new tenants to move in immediately, so we called him and he OK’d having us come back on Saturday to pick up the bikes and fill the nail holes. We made our last trip of the day back to Shakopee, where we fed a hungry dog and went to bed.

On Saturday, Dan worked his second-to-last shift at Home Depot and I finished up at the apartment. My parents returned from the cabin in the afternoon, and we went to mass at 5:15, where my mom and I sing in the choir and I play guitar. After waiting for Dan to get home from work, my mom and dad and Dan and I went to eat at Panzanella in Shakopee — a great little soup/sandwich/pizza/pasta place. We ran into Joy, our choir director, and her husband, Kent, who were also there for dinner, and had a fun chat with them. It was nice not to have to hurry back to Minneapolis to either pick Dan up from work or let out and feed Jake. We were already home — at our temporary home in Shakopee.