Surprise! On the trail in two days!

Yep you heard it right. We will be on the trail on the morning of Saturday May 7. That is two days from the time that I am writing this message.

We are in Santa Fe staying with my mom. On the way down from Boulder, we stopped at the Great Sand Dunes to fill our shoes with sand.

On Tuesday night we arrived. Our plan was to stay until Friday or Saturday, putting together the last food drops, and then head to Utah for some awesome canyoneering. But Wednesday morning I got an email from Erin with a strong command to move our start date back. Her plan is to take it slow in the snowy Sierras, and duck out for food often. The email hit me hard. I realized that I would rather be on the trail and taking zero days in SoCal than poking around Utah in the car with occasional side hikes. Capitol Reef and the Grand Canyon will be around a long time. The PCT is a living, breathing community that is getting further ahead of us with each passing day. Snow or no snow, its time to hop on.

Zm wasn't even up yet while this was going on. I used my mom as a sounding board and waited for Zm's alarm to go off. Upon waking, she agreed that starting soon was better. First order of business was to get the rest of our gear and supplies in order. We pulled every piece of hiking stuff out of the car and spread it out in the living room. Food was spread out so we could gauge what was missing. Next was leaving a message with Laura in Prescott to see if we could get her to give us a ride on our original start date, the 8th.

Then we hopped in the car and shopped like crazy people. We had three goals:

• Put together 9 days of food. We will start the trail with 2.5 days, and break the rest into 2 drops. This will get us to the first grocery store on the trail in Idyllwild
• Get more food for our supplemental drops. These are three drops that we are sending to big on-trail resupply locations where we will be putting together the next ~25 days of drops. We are sending food that is hard to buy at grocery stores to these places
• Buy the remaining pieces of gear. This was mostly little stuff like lighters, trash compactor bags, batteries, and toilet paper.

We hit the Vitamin Cottage for bulk bars, Whole Foods for bulk spices for our spice kit, Trader Joe's for bulk nuts, and finally Albertsons for the rest of the 9 days of food.

Upon arriving back at home we started portioning out the food into boxes. First we dealt with the 9 days of food, set that aside, then tackled the supplemental resupplies. While this was happening, Laura called back and told us that the 8th was no longer possible, but that the 7th was possible. A quick look at the calendar revealed our schedule. We had the rest of Wednesday into Thursday to finish our remaining tasks. Friday morning we will leave here around 4am and get to Prescott around noon. Scoop up Laura and get to the trailhead in the late evening on Friday after about 16 hours of driving. The next morning (Saturday) we begin and Laura takes our car back to Prescott.

Today we still have much to do. Boxes still need to be taken to the post office. We need to finish our final gear configuration. Blogs and emails need to be written. Phone calls must be made, and we need to clean up the huge mess we have made in my mom's place. We also need to make sure we get to bed at a reasonable time to be out the door by 4 tomorrow.

Some other news: our Peek gave up the ghost for the second time. All of the sudden the screen doesn't work anymore. We will be taking my Android phone on the trail instead... along with the solar charger that Rick gave us. While it is heavier, and the plan is more expensive, it will give us phone and full internet wherever we have signal. Thanks Rick!

We have lots to do today, so I will be wrapping up this post. Next posting should be from the trail! WooHoo!