I am really getting excited to take our trip!  I still have some route planning to do, but we’re getting closer!  It will be like Christmas when all of our new items arrive this week.  Once we get everything here, we’ll test pack the bikes.  Hopefully we don’t look like the Beverly Hillbillies on bikes!  Just 73 days until July 4!

I have 9 orders coming from Amazon to fulfill most of our ‘needs’ list for the trip.  I used my frequent flyer miles to get over $1,000 in Amazon gift cards.  It was awesome, except they sent it to me in $25 cards.  Each card had a code that was 16 characters long.  I entered $400 worth & suddenly Amazon kicked me out, said thanks for the order & charged the balance to my credit card.  Grrrr!!!  After a few minutes of filling out online questionnaires, I got a live person who helped me enter the rest of them.  Reading off the codes was incredibly painful (16 characters, 35 cards because of errors, totaled 560 letters & numbers).  D’s sound like B’s and sometimes P’s and plenty of other letters are difficult to tell over the phone too.  BUT – the friendly lady from Amazon was patient & we did get it corrected.

This order included things like waterproofing for the tent & gear, a tent repair kit, stuff sacks (I read our sleeping bags can compress into the size of a large sweet potato!), travel can opener, wire saw, bear mace, personal locator beacon, Garmin Virb (Tempe with remote, extra battery), SD cards, rope, waterproof matches, lighter, water purifying tablets (which I don’t plan to use – but they are cheap & small), gear ties, camelback filters & quick link conversion, LifeStraw, Jetboil pot stabilizer, and finally the GSI Stainless Dualist cookware.  I am pretty excited to find compact cookware that is stainless.  We’ll cook something with it when it arrives so I’ll review it once we see how it performs.  I still need to order mosquito repellent.  I really struggle with that one.  Those of you who know me understand this conflict.  Toxins.  Chemicals.  Poison.  Cancer.  No thanks!  Being eaten alive – that sounds pretty bad too.

After a brief debate with myself,  I ordered the LifeStraw.  It is a pretty nifty filter that will work on 1000 gallons of water.  My sweet life-long friend Colleen’s story about beaver fever (I think is what she called it) years ago kept popping into my head.  Don’t drink the water in the campgrounds she warned me.  Not long after, I ate delicious fajitas from a grill / tent on the beach in Mexico and had a similar unpleasant outcome.  I don’t want to bring any parasites home with me from this trek!

To date, our first aid kit consists of all the normal stuff (Ha!)!  Montmorillonite, colloidal silver, lavender, basil, peppermint, citronella, lemongrass, alcohol wipes, band aids, super glue, arnica, coconut oil and a few other essentials.  Researching essential oils & making sure we have a nice selection without over-packing is a little more time consuming than I anticipated.  At home there is always space for one more bottle!

I suggested taking this trip a couple of years ago & at the time Shawn said we needed more time to plan.  He was right!