Only four days separate me from the trail. This year hasn’t been favourable for hiking, however, next week will be spent entirely on the trails of Vermont.
First we’ll head up to Smuggler’s Notch State Park where we’ll be right on the Long Trail and minutes away from Stowe, VT. Later in the week, we’ll head down to Gifford Woods State Park where we’ll have the Appalachian Trail and the Long Trail at our doorstep.
What makes this a new experience, is the camping. I’ve done lots of day hikes in the last few years, and when we were in England, we had two weeks of continuous hiking. But I haven’t been camping — really camping — in more than a decade. Yes, I camped across the country on my sabbatical, but that was different. I never cooked: I had cereal in the morning (usually at a rest stop on the road), a sandwich at lunch (usually at a park or at my daily destination — I never drove more than 4 hours), and I went to a local restaurant for dinner. Sometimes my choices for dinner were pretty slim and I’d wish I had equipment to cook, but that’s the breaks.
Now we have lots of gear, but of course, probably half the gear is the wrong gear. But we’ll get a chance to find out for certain next week…
Expect a report.
This morning we took Augustus to the vet to receive his microchip implant allowing our alien overlords to track his every move. And when the Mothership arrives, he’ll be one of the first to be beamed aboard.
At least that’s what the Vet told me.
We also talked about the slight personality disorders Augustus possesses and how he might have come by them. We both agree that some extremely traumatic experience must have occurred while he was staying with my parents to so drastically change his personality.
Especially telling is his insane hatred for men who smoke. When we lived in Seattle, many of my male friends smoked. And Augustus never had any problem being around these people. Now, however, if he detects even the faintest hint of cigarette smoke in the air, Augustus attempts to disembowl any strange men in the area.
To diagnose his late night howling, she suggested we set up a motion-sensitive spy camera to watch what he gets up to at night. This would have the side benefit of detecting Anna’s midnight raids on the refrigerator.
Well, it is the way some people do it. Obviously, I haven’t got the knack for camping cheaply: Anna helped me rack up a $420 total bill at REI yesterday picking up gear for our upcoming trip to Vermont.
Nothing we purchased was really expensive. No $300 tents. No $150 soft-shell jackets. But somehow it all added up to a staggering sum.
We bought one of those ultra-cool Jetboil personal stoves. Of course, we couldn’t forget a fuel canister. And a stabiliser and pot-adapter. Now we can try out some of the really cool (and some really weird) recipes on the Jetboil Web site. When the food is done, we can serve it on our Lexan plates, or in our Lexan bowls, and drink something from our Lexan cups. Woo hoo! for Lexan: it’s light weight and blue.
Also adding to the shocking bottom line were several shirts, a couple pairs of pants, and some miscellaneous stuff. Nothing outrageous mind you, just not free.
Of course, this now gives me a really good excuse to go camping this summer and autumn — got to make use of all the stuff we bought!
