Thruhikers come in lots of kinds! There are those who prep everything, those who prep some things,  and those who wing it.    The preppers (like me) want to get EVERY last little thing ready ahead of time, pack it in boxes and have the boxes mailed to them along the trail so they can just open the box, put the stuff in their pack and go.

The wingers would rather just toss some stuff in their pack and hit the trail, stopping in town occasionally to check the hiker boxes and see what they can find, supplementing with stuff from a store.

The sectionpreppers will prepare everything they need for the first part of the trail, mail those boxes, and then at some point they have to stop and do a bunch of shopping, box it up and send the boxes to their next few resupplies.

The reason I like being a prepper is that when I get into town, I want to just kick back and relax.  I do NOT like shopping, and I do not trust in what I might find in some little fisherman store along the trail.  I do believe that as hikers, we represent the CDT or PCT or whatever trail we are on, and we should make local people glad rather than annoyed, that we came to their little town.  So we make a point of eating in local restaurants and I do buy a lunch and some snacks for the trail before we leave.

Being a prepper does involve an awful lot of work before we leave.  I spent half the day yesterday “collating” our dinners for the entire CDT.  That means into a plastic vege bag I put a freezedried dinner or Knorr side, a snack bag of extra veges, a snack bag of extra meat, a snack bag of extra carbs (noodles or rice) and a snack bag of cookies.  That is one dinner.  Then it gets mushed and sqooshed till it occupies the least space possible, and then tied off and labeled as to which box it goes in.  Sometimes I also remove the freezedried dinners from their packaging and put them into something lighter and smaller.  We do not need those big thick freezedried dinner bags, since we do not cook in the bag.   I know some hikers make their own freezedried dinners, but I just don’t have time to do that.

It is tedious to do all the collating, but at the same time it is fun to think about the day when we will actually walk into the towns where the various boxes are going.  And the many bags and boxes of stuff that have been sitting in our living room are gradually going away and the contents being put into their shipping boxes in the garage.  I will be glad when it is all done!