It's here!

H:
I stepped outside my door today to find a large box on my doorstep.  The box is THE box, as in the box full of our recent order of from the Ray-Way website.  I picked it up and tossed it into the RV where a cat decided to promptly play King of the Mountain:

 I know that we ordered light weight gear but it was a bit of a laugh lifting that big of a box and barely feeling any weight.  When opening the box I found the filling for our sleeping bag we will sew.  This took up 90% of the box.

 The remaining 10% is everything else to pack it all in...

What was inside this box?  Well, I'll tell you...

Backpack kits.

Zippers for pockets on the backpack, not necessary but a nice addition.

Tarp Kit

A door for one end of the tarp, known as a BatWing.  This will be a nice addition to the tarp.  A few times on our bicycle trip we pitched our tarp 3 sides low due to various weather conditions.

Net-Tent Kit
Another wonderful addition to the tarp set up!  No mosquitoes when we sleep.  Yay!

The Quilt Kit external parts that will get wrapped around that big bag of lovely warm stuffing. 

Knife Kit

Leather Sheath for the Knife made from the kit above.

Net tent stuff sack.

Tarp stuff sack.

Wonderful thread!  I ordered some of this when making the last tarp and the spool lasted for many projects after.  It was a great addition to my sewing kit.

Seam sealer for the tarp and such to keep out rain from the stitching.

More books!  Top Left: The Tarp Book.  Top Right:  Trail Life
Bottom: Siku Kayak, a story of how a couple kayaked along Alaska... who knows, maybe our next adventure!

Power!

H:
When you think about hiking for 6 months you think first of the hiking, but there will surely be a bit of time on your hands when you're not walking.  Some folks talk about falling exhausted into the sleeping bag and waking the next day to do it all again.  When we bicycled we each kept a daily journal of our thoughts about life and the trip, but we were often looking for additional entertainment throughout the day.

In the end we hit up libraries when we found them to update our blog, check emails, etc.  Instead of taking entertainment we found it.  We went to a cinema, went to a couple parties, floated down a river on a boat, watched a sailboat tack under the bridge we ate lunch next to, visited some museums, took a few hikes, and mostly spent a lot of time being the center of entertainment telling stories of our trip and of ourselves to complete strangers.  But all these things are less likely to be found on the trail.

I once read about a hiker who ripped apart a paperback novel by the chapter and included it in their restock parcels they had mailed to them as they hiked.  Others tote around the whole book and some take magazine.  My reading of modern hikers tend more toward hauling some sort of electronic device for entertainment: cell phone, camera, MP3 player, Kindle.  We are in the process of sorting out exactly what we want to try.

The following are items we are planning on taking:

• 2nd generation Kindle = 170g 
• Cellphone.  Dave has a Samsung Galaxy S2 = 166g 
• Mini MP3 player for listening to music and audio books = 56g (1 for each person = 112g)

Total weight: 448g or just under 1 pound.  

But now we come down to battery power.  The Kindle will survive for a couple of weeks of use on a single charge.  Dave is currently performing tests on his phone to find out battery capacity.  The MP3 player is new and hardly used so we need to run tests on that as well.  All of these device recharge via micro or mini USB and there is a proliferation of rechargeable battery packs available.  

Our first battery pack purchase weighed 280g (over half a pound) and held a 10,000mAh charge.  The drawback to this battery pack was that once discharged it took over 9 hours plugged into AC power to recharge itself.  Dave wanted the recharge to happen faster and decided on smaller battery packs and more of them.   

Our next attempt will be three 3,000mAh batteries that weigh about 85g each.  A sight loss of battery capacity but may be worth the drop because these are reported to recharge quicker due to being smaller so long as we take enough recharge adapters to plug into AC power.  Dave also likes this idea because of electronic redundancy and weight distribution between packs.  

Now... what books to take along?!

The color of life...

H:
We finally ordered our gear! Well, some of it. The really important bits... tarp, net tent, sleeping bag, backpacks, knife.

We purchased kits too! Not only do we have the fun of hiking but we get to make our own gear. This might be daunting to some and not advisable according to many websites that I've read... then again, they don't know us. While we're not normally the kind to buy kits we found that this was a very economical way to go. Usually we just look around (often in trashcans) and we just make up whatever we need. I recently recounted the story of how I made part of a costume out of a sheet I found in the middle of the road. One response was: "I don't normally look at things in the road and think... hmm... I can wear that." We get that a lot.

The kits we ordered are from rayjardine.com.

We purchased a tarp kit. We'd bought a tarp kit from this site and used it on our bicycle trip but this time we added the net tent that is rigged up underneath. On our bike trip we had just the tarp. When spring finally melted into summer we made an emergent alteration to the sleeping bag in the form of a roll of screen from a hardware store sewn to the top of the sleeping bag. It was a setup that worked just fine until the summer finally (FINALLY) warmed up and we sweated to death as the mosquitoes swarmed the net over our heads.

We already live with very little accessories in life so we plan to hike the same way. We've opted for lightweight packs to haul our lightweight gear around for the hike. These packs are 2800 cubic inches each and have an extension collar for adding extra capacity when hauling a full load of food.

We opted for a quilt kit as well. Previously we shared an unzipped sleeping bag and it worked most of the time. It was a bag we already owned and had purchased when we had been car camping. This kit is supposed to be lighter weight than that bag and more of a custom fit.

To round it out we bought a knife kit that Dave will get to carve out the handle for our blade for the trail.

In addition to all that there will be a bit of stuff sack sewing.

The hardest part of all the ordering was picking colors! There were too many to choose from. We worked hard not to double up colors of stuff sacks and such. You don't want to try to pull out your tarp and find that you've grabbed your spare clothes or sleeping bag because all your stuff sacks are the same color! Now that we're color coordinated we just have to wait for it all to arrive. More gear is still needed but this is a good start. We will post updates and photos as we get to the sewing.