The time has actually come.  We are flying out to San Diego tomorrow morning and making our way to Campo, California on Wednesday morning to start the hike.  As promised, here is a picture of all our boxes packed and pretty much ready to go.  There are 33 total boxes going to 21 different locations along the trail.  The polka dots on the side of boxes is our way to try to distinguish our boxes from the other hundreds of boxes that will be sitting at the mail drop locations.

Along with this blog, don't forget to check out our "Where are We Now" link on our website (http://www.timandgerri.com/where-are-we-now.html).  Here you will be able to see a map of where we spent each night on the trail and watch our progress.  Our progress will be slow going to start since we are planning on only going 10 miles per day (relative to others who start out in better shape who'll do 20 miles to start - we'll get there eventually).

We are in the final day of planning & preparation and everything has fallen into place as planned.  We purchased our one-way airline tickets to San Diego (flying out April 1). Also, our house is under contract and is scheduled to close on April 4.  We planned on getting rid of as much stuff as possible, but it got harder and harder, so we had the Air Force put all our household goods into non-temperary storage.  We plan on it leaving it all in storage as long as the Air Force allows it.

We were also able to sell the sailboat which we trailered up to New Jersey to complete the sale.  The new owners were very excited as we drove into their driveway.  The best part of driving to New Jersey was we were able to get together with family before heading out for 6 months.  Jodie and Troy (sister & nephew) drove down from Connecticut and my uncle, aunt, and cousins (Larry, Pat, Marc, & Ethan) drove over and we all got to eat dinner together and catch up after many years of not being able to see each other.

Now we are in Collins, Ohio where we are busy packing up all our resupply boxes.  It is a lot more work than expected, but it will be worth it when we get to town and our box is sitting there with 1 weeks worth of food, maps, and toiletries.  Here is what over 100 days of food looks like before being boxed up into 21 individual packages.  Yes it is as overwhelming as it looks!  I got quite sick of bagging up dry milk into 419 1/3 cup individual servings for hot chocolate, carnation instant breakfast, and cereal...OY!

More important than boxing up all these goodies is that my wonderful sister-in-law Mary has volunteered to support our hike by mailing out our resupply boxes as we need them.  Thanks Mary!

Look for the next blog posting in a few days where all this food will be boxed and ready to go.