The first thing packed is a box with jewelry making supplies in it. It was part of finally cleaning off the dining room table to make it usable after two years of housing scattered jewelry supplies. I knew I needed enough to teach a niece and nephew a couple jewelry techniques while we visit them, plus supplies to fix last year's present to somebody else where the size was incorrect. Everything else went out to the jewelry table in the next room. Now the dining room table is perfectly able to start everybody's new collection of stuff that had to be set down someplace... just until... hey, is somebody ever going to move this mess?
OK, the food is all packed. Water too, other than the gallon jug we'll fill for the dog last minute. The water is even in the car, two 24-bottle packs side-by-side on the back seat behind me. Really, why haul them into the house just to haul them back to the car in a few weeks? The food is in a sturdy plastic crate that will fit on top of it where the combined height won't interfere with my rear and side vision of the road.
The crate itself was an elaborate packing job. First the shopping for non perishables: dried fruits, jerky and Slim Jims, nuts, crackers, gorp, canned soup, microwaveable mac-n-cheese with foil packs of tuna to get mixed in, pudding cups. Then we needed a spare set of silverware, just two place settings, cheap enough so no problem if something gets lost. A pair of smaller boxes with our names on them hold a day's worth of food, possibly more, each with a mix of our individual preferences, as balanced as possible. Once we eat our way through our boxes, we'll repack with the next day's worth. Or two or however it works out.
The glove box is packed too. I cleaned it out... pretty much. Amazing what was in there that nobody knew about. To begin with, I always keep the car manuals in there. They stay on the bottom. On the very top sits the handicap parking hanger card, these days only Steve's. I no longer qualify. Next in priority, and sitting between, is a plastic bag with all the cab cards, inspection reports, insurance proof, and repair/maintenance receipts. By now that's pretty full. There was a map book, 50 states plus Canada. Handy as you think that'd be, considering I don't use GPS, it's very seldom used. I try to know where I'm going before I get in the car, and often keep the mental image of where the roads go and what the names/numbers are I'm looking for. Consider it a result of my 2 million+ miles driving as a courier. Unfortunately, that map book had every page sharply folded an inch from the edges by sitting cramped in there for several years. In practical terms, unusable. There's a different map book in there now. The printed itinerary will go in on top of everything, all the info needed for where, when, route, and phone number for each stop. Both pages.
Finally, there are four (!) glasses cases floating around, hard bodied. Two have sun glasses that clip over regular glasses, one is a pair of sunglasses to switch with regular glasses for Steve. Finally, the real surprise for me was my previous pair of trifocals. It had been so long I'd forgotten what they even looked like! Usually I return them when I pick up my new pair so somebody else can use them. This time I forgot. There is so little change in my prescription that they are still perfectly usable. This pair comes in handy, however, for two reasons. They now have one of those cords fastened to the bows to help keep them on my neck should they get taken or knocked, off. These will be the ones I wear on our jet boat trip up the Colorado River out of Moab. Once they survive that, I'll be ordering new lenses for my favorite purple frames this summer, and will wear those while the others are in process. Love the purple frames, hate the lenses. Don't need to buy both.
The living room is collecting piles of things to go along on the trip. There are miscellaneous presents we're bringing people, much cheaper than mailing them. There's a cooler for ice and beverages, slender and perfectly sized and shaped to fit in the hatch between two more plastic crates which will themselves get packed and put in back to organize miscellaneous boxes, bags, and what not. A load of empty pill bottles, sans labels, will find a home somewhere, taken up to donate to a charity which finds homes for dogs. Some of those dogs need meds, and blank bottles save the charity an expense. We have a relative who is good friends with somebody who works there, assuring us they are welcomed.
The dog has her own collection of stuff to be packed. She gets the passenger side of the back seat, ending with her kennel. On the floor between seats will go her food, treats to tempt her back inside the kennel after pit stops, water and food bowls, flea control, harness, leashes, sweater, dental chews, special blanket.... I'm sure there's more, but it's all in two locations, so the night before when we load up the car it will be an easy relocation. The only issue is that the kennel has to sit level, which the seat isn't. In addition, it will have to be raised about 4 inches so the kennel door can actually open, since the space between the back seat and the car door is where Steve's walking stick goes. The stick sits high enough to block her kennel door unless I raise the kennel up.
I have a plan. We have a few flat things which can ride under the kennel. There's a big book which Steve is giving to a friend for one of her students. That's one inch. There are extra bags of dog food which can be patted flat where they need to be and arranged, along with bags of dental chews, blankets, and whatever else can go there to raise and level out the base for her kennel. Of course this means she won't be able to jump from the ground right into the car, but at 18 pounds, I think she can be lifted. The seat belt will be in use for the duration, as the kennel only comes out one time, during the boat trip where the company office person will babysit her... for a fee. Can't leave her in the car for 4 hours after all.
Steve and I have our own collections of meds. He uses a set of small sectioned containers to divide pills into types, with very good magnetic closures to keep everything intact. One of each every day and he's done. Those pack nicely into a suitcase. The labeled bottles with the remainder not needed during the trip will get their own box or bag. I go a different route. My morning pills go into little ziploc bags, one bag per day. Evening pills the same. Sharpies label them for clarity in case I totally lose my ability to distinguish between very different sets/shapes/colors of pills. Another set of little ziplocs each hold my instant mocha mix for every morning, and are packed right next to the morning pills. Those are already packed and in a pouch in my suitcase. My labeled bottles of post-trip pills go in their own box in one of those crates, but not until much closer to leaving because I'm still dipping into those bottles every day, and will be accompanied by a variety of toiletries and sundries I can't live without once we're up north, just in case, and don't wish to have to buy after arrival. This trip is expensive enough already! I'm sure 95% of those will be returning with us, but you never know....
The living room floor is covered by a variety of empty boxes, as well as those large plastic reusable shopping bags. Some will be filled and put in the car. Others will stay here and stored or recycled. I just need to remember to go through them to be sure all the packed ones get out into the car!
The rest is still on the lists. They were the start of the whole process, two sheets plus spillover to the back sides, double columns. Lots of stuff is still in use, like clothes. I actually could pack my suitcase right now, but don't need to. I'm using laundry as my excuse to postpone that packing since some of it is dirty. The last to pack will be the electronics, their chargers, and a super-strip multi-plug surge protector that will be removed from the TV conglomeration and packed. Have you noticed that too many motels have perhaps one double outlet for those important chargers to get plugged into? If you're really lucky, it's actually in a usable location. I've seen rooms where the only outlet is over the bathroom sink! Talk about a safety hazard, especially when said sink is just a basin on a pedestal without a countertop.
It's gotten complicated for us medically. I need to plug in my recording device for my pacemaker, which collects the information each night and sends it via wi-fi to the cardiologist's office. It's a process with lots of green and red flashing lights which has been known to wake me up. Steve's pain interrupter for his back needs to be recharged daily. Both our laptops will need charging, though I've convinced Steve - I think - that our Kindles won't actually be in use on the trip. The cell phones need charging at least every other day.
Did I mention we're traveling with 4 cameras?And about 18 batteries? Luckily, three of them use identical batteries, 6 of which are brand new. We also have 6 plug-in-while-holding-the-battery chargers, one for three batteries for the oddball camera, the rest identical. The car also has charger capacity for a single battery at a time, hooking up to the charger case rather than the camera, as well as two more chargers for our different cell phones. These all go into the port where what used to be a cigarette lighter went when cars came with those. (Boy, make me feel ancient again!) At least the tripod doesn't need charger space, a small mercy.
Why, you ask - you did ask, right? - so many cameras? First, I got a Nikon Coolpix several years ago. I love it so much I convinced Steve he'd be happier with a decent camera that would give him good, high resolution pictures and be simple to use. Then my original Coolpix produced a grey spot in the photos, oddly only visible against blue sky. Of course it's situated exactly where sky is in pictures, center top. It's not on the lens, may be inside the telescoping lens or some other kind of issue. Likely as expensive to fix as replace. So I started looking for a replacement, and found the same thing but with an upgrade, 30x zoom as compared to 22x. I do a LOT of zooming to get close to critters visually which somehow prefer not to get close to me in person. Go figure. It's been refurbished, and the price was reasonable. All three of those use the same battery, charger, etc. I plan to use the new one as much as possible on the trip, and if performance matches my expectations, pass the older one on to my stepdaughter. She tends to shoot people, and a flaw in the sky shouldn't matter that much. I'll show her how to work around it. If she takes up the hobby as I did once getting a decent camera, she can upgrade to her own satisfaction.
The 4th camera is an older Nikon, a SLR camera, lots of fiddling with menu changes and a long learning curve. I'd used it for a couple years solely in point-and-shoot mode, and retired it on a shelf. With interchangeable lenses and filters and stuff, it's case takes a huge amount of space. With the car so loaded up, why am I bringing this one along too? It's a fantasy goal. I want to take advantage of going to Dark Skies areas and get some star shots, particularly the galaxy. I only need one setting, one lens, one cable, Steve's tripod, all 3 well-charged batteries, and the willingness to get up and out around 3AM on at least one clear night. I may well do a repeat shooting session in a different location, different foreground. The macro and telephoto lenses and filters can stay home, so I've borrowed the smaller case from an even older camcorder to fit what's needed. If it works well for night shots, I'll likely try again during the summer from remote spots in MN or WI, or on the way home up in Glacier. The nice thing about keeping it just for star shots is that I can set everything ahead of time for that situation. I've been doing my research, both with its manual (surprise! I still have it!) and a couple online resources, made notes on the appropriate pages of the manual, and it shouldn't take three hours to set up for each shoot. I may find out that the three original batteries for it are too old to take more than a couple pictures each with a 25 second open shutter, and I'll need to replace one or more. Success or not, either way, besides the ground scenery, it'll be a new adventure for me/us, and isn't that the point of a vacation?
What? You just want to relax, snooze, drink, and veg out? What kind of vacation is that?
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