So we are back and it is hard to think about the real world now. Fortunately I wrote while gone otherwise it would be too difficult to go back and piece together this trip. So here it goes: Day 1: Tues July 24th Unfortunately, starting late in the morning for a trip means a late arrival. So our 1st days plan had to be changed. We did make it in 3 hours to the ranger station/Visitor Center only to find that we had not confirmed our reservations to hike within the given time frame so that our reservations were canceled at 11a.m., a common occurrence as per the ranger. There were, however, enough open spaces so that we could still hike as planned. We had to rent bear cans to hold our food when in camp ... read more

So I promised that I’d write a post about menus for our backpacking trip. We’ve had lots of stops and starts and experiments on food and I think that we finally have made our decisions. As I’ve written before we have several considerations with choosing the foods we will eat. I cannot eat gluten at all and need to eat several small meals as well, Elias eats a major amount of calories a day, Dale can eat plenty too, and it will be cold so we all will eat more. I will add Pinion nuts to most meals for this reason. For breakfasts kids and Dale have chosen various cereals and granolas. We told kids that if they wanted a specific cereal they could have it but they decided to share everything. One morning we will ... read more

Today Dale and I started making a mega list of everything we need to take; underlining those items we still need to buy. We decided to just rent down sleeping bags rather than spend $600+ per bag. We will also rent a tent for the 3 kids. We’ll use our Coleman tent for us, it’s a little heavier than a backpack tent but we already own it and it is only a couple of pounds more. I wanted to buy a solar charger for the phone and camera but what I really need/want is really more than I want to spend and larger than I want to carry. A simpler solution is not to use the phone much, I’d wanted to use it to post blogs if I could find service at all, and to buy ... read more

Here is a little background on our backpacking experience as I have some relatives who ask for me to write about earlier experiences. Dale and I first backpacked before we were married. We hiked into the Sierra’s, a 10 hour hike, over a pass into what is called Evolution Valley. We stayed for several days but we were certainly not as sophisticated then as we are today. Those days we just ate the freeze dried meals and cold granola for breakfast. When our kids were young we hiked down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back up over 3 days. I carried fresh food, one meal we will have on our upcoming backpack trip; Chicken Curry over rice. We had other backpack trips into the back county; on one I carried angel food cake, ... read more

Last night Camilo and Justin came for dinner and to discuss the upcoming hike. I’d started mapping out meals in preparation for our talk. (Just like a mom?) Camilo thought that he and his boys would just have bologna or peanut butter sandwiches every night, Justin didn’t have much outlined. My outline was, of course, much more extensive: chicken curry over rice the first night, then other meals of pasta with sauce, warm quinoa salad, chili and sautéed salmon patties with mashed potatoes. Camilo quickly decided that he’d go in with us for the curry and the pasta but was shocked when we told him he’d need to carry his own food. He had hiked when in the military but they had emphasized taking care of his feet; he hadn’t thought about how his food was ... read more

The big concern, besides food, is that I’m just coming off a knee injury. It is actually an old ski injury that flared up when I increased my incline on the tread mill, one of our cardio routines. I didn’t do anything about it for a couple of weeks just thinking it would go away but when it didn’t then I went to the doctor and was diagnosed with tendinitis. I told the Doc that I was going backpacking in 3 weeks and my knee had to be healed up. Not a small request as I am beginning to understand. The Doc, to get rid of me put me into physical therapy. So now I go to physical therapy 3 times a week, 1-1/2 hours each visit and then on the other days do prescribed exercises ... read more

We did just get home from camping, haven’t done anything about repairing the RV floor and yet here we are planning a backpack trip. We will leave next week. Here are a few of the details: we will hike to Cottonwood Lakes, this is out of Lone Pine in the Inyo National Forest on the east side of the Sierras. There is a cutoff from this trail to Mt. Whitney if that helps. This area is south of Mammoth. Our middle son Justin worked in this area with the CCC several years ago building trails up. We hiked back to see him at that time taking his daughter. The trail wasn’t too difficult; the biggest problem was just keeping her going. (Her bones were broken, her bones stopped working, she had no bones to walk with, ... read more

What a difference a couple of years made. Grandkids helped so much with the packing up. It used to be that it would take us hours to get everything together, but this time we were completely packed by 10a.m. Before leaving all of us came together to hold a small “Day of the Dead” in remembrance of Aubrey, our little granddaughter who never got to experience camping, and my niece Heidi who died way too young. We lit a candle for the light and incense to help lift their spirits to the Great Hunting Grounds. We also hoped for the spirits to give us safe travels home. We’d thought that we’d just take the road north to South Lake Tahoe, eat lunch and come on home. The road to Tahoe was much quicker than the one ... read more