That’s a Wrap!

So I said I would answer questions anybody had, pretend you are as obsessed with thinking about this as much as I still am. And then I’ll let y’all rest in peace and we’ll move on, I promise. But there were a few curiosities, so here you go!

What foods would you repeat and/or recommend? Was there anything you never got tired of?

Ahhhh, food — my favorite thing to think about when it comes to backpacking! Let’s take it a meal at a time. For breakfasts, we all kept an enthusiasm for good, old-fashioned oatmeal. 2 packets per person (1 plain, 1 flavored), plus a Tbsp flaxseed and a Tbsp hemp hearts per person, plus a Tbsp coconut oil per person. We also pretty much always had an appetite for our porridge (grated cauliflower, apple, berries, flaxseed, peanut butter powder, coconut milk, cinnamon).

At lunch, we never tired of tuna or chicken salad, either with curry powder and craisins or with sweet pickle relish, and mayo and crackers of some variety. Freeze dried beef taquitos and popcorn shrimp were always popular, as was simply beef jerky with some fruit and/or veg and/or cheese. (Must of us also liked hummus and roasted peppers/squash/eggplant/onion spread on a tortilla, but some of us got tired of that.)

For dinner, we couldn’t go wrong with just cheap dorm room ramen (I know, I know). We did always have a protein and a vegetable to add, of which probably seaweed and tofu were the most universally popular. (The beets were a failure; it looked like brains. And definitely save beets for the day before you’re in civilization and will have modern facilities at your disposal.) Soup in general was always a hit: carrot ginger, broccoli bacon, chicken vegetable. Meatloaf was delicious, and mac n cheese with ground beef and diced vegetables, and Zattarains red beans and rice with lots of diced veggies. I’m getting hungry!

Snacks were tougher. We got sick of all the bars, and even trail mix could be a hard sell. But Chex mix with some salted nuts thrown in disappeared fast!

What did you do to vary the menu each day?

Well, I pretty much prepared the meals we eat at home for us to take with us. So as varied as our regular diet is, thus it was on the trail. When I filled our resupply boxes, I did make sure that similar meals were spread out with a couple of sections in between. So we had ramen in legs 1, 3, 5, 9, 11, meatloaf in legs 2, 6, 8, and carrot soup in legs 4, 7, 10, etc. I didn’t make myself crazy counting nutrients or calories or anything, just figured we’d ingest everything wet needed, get it all in there, over the course of a week or so.

Did you over- or under-prepare resupply boxes?

Generally speaking, they were really good. We often did have too much trail mix. Even though I tried to vary the flavors (peanut butter lovers, classic gorp, Tex Mex mix, tropical), we almost always ended up packing some out. And bars. I did pack a wide variety of brands (Kind, Clif, Lara, Luna, PowerCrunch) and flavors, but I often ended up swapping them all out for a load of Uncrustable PB&J sandwiches, which at least got eaten. Other than that, we pretty much came out perfectly! (Unless, of course, we decided to hike really fast and cut a whole day out. Then we, duh, had a whole day’s worth of food left over.)

What clothes/equipment worked best?

We didn’t really buy anything special just for this trip, so we pretty much knew everything was going to work well. That being said, some of our gear was ready for an update anyway, so we took advantage of the opportunity to do it now. Specifically, our sleeping pads (four new REI Flash pads which are insulated and have lots of little inflated bumpies to make side sleeping more comfortable); our cook stove (a “pocket rocket” that screws right into the fuel canister); a water filtration system (three Sawyer squeezes which just screw onto the top of plastic bottles). We did make a few splurges: inflatable pillows (2 months on our bundled hiking clothes wasn’t going to do it); a double quilt for Bill and I to share (same weight as a single mummy bag); sun shirts (light-weight, long-sleeved, hooded SPF-protected shirts). If there had been a really good, light, bug-proof, affordable 4-person tent, we probably would have bought a new one. But ours did us just fine.

One thing we should have brought with us but consciously decided to leave at home (and consequently purchased along the way) was rain pants. It was such a wet year, we definitely needed them, especially Tessa who tends to get colder quicker than the rest of us.

What helped each family member stay positive?

I think mostly it was each other, as we were very rarely all discouraged at the same time. Almost always there was at least one cheerleader, one person who believed it would eventually stop raining. We also had town visits to look forward to every 3-5 days, with grandparents to spoil us, and showers and toilets and cold drinks and TVs. We also had some tunes going sometimes (soundtracks of favorite movies and Taylor Swift and the Beatles). And candy, lots of candy.

What was each person’s highlight?

For Maggie it was segment 24, plunging off the top of the world down Elk Creek towards the Animas. It is absolutely breathtakingly beautiful, requires some fun acrobatic hiking through the avalanche fields, and it’s downhill.

For Tessa, it was zero days. An honest answer! It’s hard to compete with ice cream cones, swimming pools, grandparently attention, and cartoons when you’re 8 years old. But I like to think it was all the sweeter because of the accomplishment of how we got there. We earned those days!

For Bill, it was the continual sense of accomplishment every time we reached a little (or big) goal. There were lots of finish lines before the Final Finish Line that we crossed all together, as a unit, all because of our family working together.

For me, it was watching the girls get along and play together. When we stripped away all the distractions of our own separate lives, we actually like being with each other!

How are you adjusting to “normal” life?

You know, we were ready to finish. We followed this journey as far as we could, did as much as we could, and it felt right to then be done with it. Of course the girls were excited to be with friends their own age, Bill and I were excited for quiet-ness, we all enjoyed hearing voices that didn’t belong to one of the four of us. It has been delicious to not worry about weather, track the clouds, wonder if we’ll get wet or sun-scorched.

There are things I miss about the trail, namely the simplicity of each day. What will we eat out of these limited choices? Where will we sleep in 10 hours? Do I need to fill a water bottle here or are we still full-up? And that’s about it. “Real life” is a much more complicated dance of decisions and schedules and relationships.

Alright. Enough is enough. Thanks for letting us get a little bit one-track-minded here. But we do realize there are other things to life, and we’re ready to move on to them.

Like school (which is going great, by the way)! Check out our 3rd and 6th graders! Oh these kids — just love em to pieces!