Final Preparations for MA

I took a few pictures of our preparations in recent days. The major developments were that
a. Our tent arrived
b. We bought food

There's the tent. It's about six pounds and out of the box it was bundled like a baby. Very cute.

As soon as the tent arrived, we had to set it up in the basement Bill Bryson style. Here's AJ putting up the tent (warrior style) while I helped by taking pictures.


Despite my lack of assistance, the tent was soon assembled. It's really great inside... tons of windows, good height, the whole deal.


In the food department, things were done very meticulously. For our six day hike, we decided that we would need 30,000 calories. 30k will allow us each about 2,500 a day, which, while seemingly a bunch, pales in comparison to the 4 or 5 thousand that this kind of hiking apparently burns each day. We added up the exact calorie content of all the food pictured and made menus for each day. Mac and Cheese, rice, cous cous, cliff bars, candy bars, trail mix, tuna, beef jerky, dry milk, etc. We shopped at 6 different stores to get all this stuff, and attempted to get as many calories as possible per pound. We're bringing about 32,000 calories (some extra just in case!)

All together the food for the six days weighs about 23lbs (yikes!).

Altogether, the two of us will be hauling 83lbs of gear!