Canadian couple driven to live and eat naturally. We're travelling the world taking on challenges that test us physically, mentally and emotionally. Visit www.naturallydriven.ca for more!
Sunday 18 December 2011
Food Matters: Reloaded
Over the past few months we've put in some serious time dehydrating food and vacuum sealing individual portions that we were planning on putting in resupply boxes that would be mailed to us along the trail. Then we began to question our plan. What about customs? What if we have a box sent to us, only to be held up in customs, or even worse, denied entry to the US altogether? We’d get to a town expecting to be able to pick up our food for the next stretch, and there’d be nothing there for us. I asked around and got even more discouraged to go with this method, as it’s just TOO risky, not to mention the postage costs. That we knew about and we okay with, but the uncertainty of these expensive little boxes of joy actually getting to us, well that kyboshed the whole operation.
NEW PLAN! (tentative as Julia has her reservations as to the details)
Many people utilize a “buy-as-you-go” method. I’ve read a few peoples’ experiences with it and this is, given our situation, how I think WE should go about it.
Firstly, we’ll have to get a really sturdy “box” (one each) that we can use as a bounce box. A bounce box is exactly as you’d expect. It’s a box that you mail to yourself, continually bouncing it up the trail as you go. When we get to a “bigger town” that has adequate resupply facilities (a decent grocery store) we’ll resupply for the next stretch as well as put some stuff in our bounce box to send ahead to the next town that may not have as good of a grocery store. Some places will only have gas station convenience stores that carry junk food and the basics. In some rare situations, we’ll have to squeeze in some stuff for a couple stretches, but may be able to find some “basics” along the way, or eat out of hiker boxes every now and again. These are boxes in which people ditch food that they are sick of eating and don’t want to carry.
I have no doubt that we’ll get into situations where we can’t find the quality foods that we want, and variety for a few days will be lacking, but that will only be a few days out of about 18 weeks. We’ll survive.
Julia also has a very close family friend (that I’ve met as well on a number of occasions) that lives in Bakersfield, California. We MAY (?) be able to have her mail us a couple of pre-prepared boxes to a couple SELECT locations. One important one would be Kennedy Meadows. That’s where we need to pick up our ice axes and bear vaults for the Sierras. It would be fantastic if we could mail these to her long in advance and then get off the trail near her place for a couple days to set-up the few boxes she would send to us.
I think the costs incurred along the trail, buying food as we go and maybe staying a few extra nights in motels / campgrounds and the extra cost of the extra bounce box (we’d have one anyhow) will be made up by not having to buy all the food NOW, dehydrate it (electricity ain’t cheap!) and then mail it (this would be insane expensive) as per our initial plan.
I’m comfortable with it. She needs some more convincing / details first. J
There’s only about 134 days until we hit the trail, maybe less.
Food Matters, part 2
Over the past few months we've put in some serious time dehydrating food and vacuum sealing individual portions that we were planning on putting in resupply boxes that would be mailed to us along the trail. Then we began to question our plan. What about customs? What if we have a box sent to us, only to be held up in customs, or even worse, denied entry to the US altogether? We’d get to a town expecting to be able to pick up our food for the next stretch, and there’d be nothing there for us. I asked around and got even more discouraged to go with this method, as it’s just TOO risky, not to mention the postage costs. That we knew about and we okay with, but the uncertainty of these expensive little boxes of joy actually getting to us, well that kyboshed the whole operation.
NEW PLAN! (tentative as Julia has her reservations as to the details)
Many people utilize a “buy-as-you-go” method. I’ve read a few peoples’ experiences with it and this is, given our situation, how I think WE should go about it.
Firstly, we’ll have to get a really sturdy “box” (one each) that we can use as a bounce box. A bounce box is exactly as you’d expect. It’s a box that you mail to yourself, continually bouncing it up the trail as you go. When we get to a “bigger town” that has adequate resupply facilities (a decent grocery store) we’ll resupply for the next stretch as well as put some stuff in our bounce box to send ahead to the next town that may not have as good of a grocery store. Some places will only have gas station convenience stores that carry junk food and the basics. In some rare situations, we’ll have to squeeze in some stuff for a couple stretches, but may be able to find some “basics” along the way, or eat out of hiker boxes every now and again. These are boxes in which people ditch food that they are sick of eating and don’t want to carry.
I have no doubt that we’ll get into situations where we can’t find the quality foods that we want, and variety for a few days will be lacking, but that will only be a few days out of about 18 weeks. We’ll survive.
Julia also has a very close family friend (that I’ve met as well on a number of occasions) that lives in Bakersfield, California. We MAY (?) be able to have her mail us a couple of pre-prepared boxes to a couple SELECT locations. One important one would be Kennedy Meadows. That’s where we need to pick up our ice axes and bear vaults for the Sierras. It would be fantastic if we could mail these to her long in advance and then get off the trail near her place for a couple days to set-up the few boxes she would send to us.
I think the costs incurred along the trail, buying food as we go and maybe staying a few extra nights in motels / campgrounds and the extra cost of the extra bounce box (we’d have one anyhow) will be made up by not having to buy all the food NOW, dehydrate it (electricity ain’t cheap!) and then mail it (this would be insane expensive) as per our initial plan.
I’m comfortable with it. She needs some more convincing / details first. J
There’s only about 134 days until we hit the trail, maybe less.
NEW PLAN! (tentative as Julia has her reservations as to the details)
Many people utilize a “buy-as-you-go” method. I’ve read a few peoples’ experiences with it and this is, given our situation, how I think WE should go about it.
Firstly, we’ll have to get a really sturdy “box” (one each) that we can use as a bounce box. A bounce box is exactly as you’d expect. It’s a box that you mail to yourself, continually bouncing it up the trail as you go. When we get to a “bigger town” that has adequate resupply facilities (a decent grocery store) we’ll resupply for the next stretch as well as put some stuff in our bounce box to send ahead to the next town that may not have as good of a grocery store. Some places will only have gas station convenience stores that carry junk food and the basics. In some rare situations, we’ll have to squeeze in some stuff for a couple stretches, but may be able to find some “basics” along the way, or eat out of hiker boxes every now and again. These are boxes in which people ditch food that they are sick of eating and don’t want to carry.
I have no doubt that we’ll get into situations where we can’t find the quality foods that we want, and variety for a few days will be lacking, but that will only be a few days out of about 18 weeks. We’ll survive.
Julia also has a very close family friend (that I’ve met as well on a number of occasions) that lives in Bakersfield, California. We MAY (?) be able to have her mail us a couple of pre-prepared boxes to a couple SELECT locations. One important one would be Kennedy Meadows. That’s where we need to pick up our ice axes and bear vaults for the Sierras. It would be fantastic if we could mail these to her long in advance and then get off the trail near her place for a couple days to set-up the few boxes she would send to us.
I think the costs incurred along the trail, buying food as we go and maybe staying a few extra nights in motels / campgrounds and the extra cost of the extra bounce box (we’d have one anyhow) will be made up by not having to buy all the food NOW, dehydrate it (electricity ain’t cheap!) and then mail it (this would be insane expensive) as per our initial plan.
I’m comfortable with it. She needs some more convincing / details first. J
There’s only about 134 days until we hit the trail, maybe less.
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