Packing for the Hills

Time is getting short, and though I've been amassing stores of food and goodies and books for the entire month of May, looking forward to this point, I am still unable to grasp that only three days from now, I'll already be on the road to Elk City. I'll be going over the North Cascades Highway, which will give me a chance to say goodbye to the area I've spent my last three summers in. I will miss the lakes and mountains a great deal this year. My brother's dog is with a friend outside of Tonasket, and I will pick her up before heading over Sherman Pass and then south, south, south to Lewiston, followed by the final leg out to Elk City.

I thought you all might like a peek at the piles of stuff (almost entirely food) that the poor mules will be humping out into the wilderness for me.

Here we have fruit, nuts and crackers, as well as desserts. I haven't eaten raspberry jello since high school, so far as I know, so I'm excited about that. I dried about 15 pounds of bananas, and they all fit into the two quart ziplocs seen on the right.

Here we have starches, legumes and vegetables. I dried mushrooms, kale, chard and broccoli. I probably have a shit-ton of rice, but hey, best to have too much, right? Right?

This here's the bakery, and the condiments. My buddy Kevin Biggs was out in Vermont when I was getting ready to order some flour, so I called and asked him if he felt like stuffing a 25-lb bag of flour in his carry-on. Never one to be put off by a challenge, he did so, and was shocked when the security people didn't even ask him to open his backpack after its trip through the x-ray. Then again, they didn't open his checked baggage, either--a horse feed sack that he had tied up with rope. 

Canned goods, toiletries. Not seen in these photos are my coffee, tea, gookinade, gin, vodka or whiskey. Nor the pile of landjagers, jerky and bacon that Devon brought me from Andahl's Meats in Mount Vernon. The landjagers are in a top secret location, to reduce the risk of any pilfering by myself or anyone else. 

And below are most of the books I am bringing. A few didn't make the photo op. Thank you for all of your suggestions, and thank you to those of you who are loaning me your own books!

If that doesn't equal enough reading (there are another 5 or six books, too), then I'll be really surprised.

You might get one or two more posts out of me, as I have several weeks of guard school-lookout-intro to beauracracy-training to complete before actually being packed out to Sheep Hill.