Shenandoah Plans part 2

...or lack thereof.

Back on February 16 I posted a quick blurb on plans for the guys to do some hiking in the Shenandoah on a long weekend in early April. Now five weeks have gone by, and I pretty much haven't given this any thought since. Not that I am not excited about it, but it has been a very busy late winter/early spring, and the continued cold and snow stretching into March (we got 5 more inches on March 20) doesn't exactly have me in an outdoors frame of mind yet. But I better get there quickly, because there is almost no time left.

Plans as of now: Leave Thursday early evening in 2 cars (insanity, but I am the only one that seems to think so). Drive almost all the way and stay in a motel. Hiking and campsite Friday. Hiking and campsite Saturday. Short hike and drive home Sunday. In other words, unchanged and with no real added detail since we booked the dates. Others seem to have not had this at top of mind either...

Motel has been booked. Car rental is not needed. Hikes have been thought about a little, but not selected nor determined in terms of which days to do what. Food has not been addressed at all.

Camp Chef Gear

To Be Done: Gear is a personal issue for the most part. As is usual, me and brother Dave will share his 2-man tent. Standard gear doesn't require much thought. But someone needs to play quartermaster, and in recent trips that has been me (ok, so it plays to my anal detail-oriented strengths...you are what you are). I also am a big proponent of the fact that we are a bunch of 50-ish guys who are car-camping and not backpacking, so why not eat well and have some good beverages on hand. So in the coming days, I will bang out a meal plan that will cover Friday lunch and dinner, three meals on Saturday, and Sunday breakfast and trail lunch. None of this should be too tough, but my basic nature makes this lack of prep with little more than a week to go seem...unprepared.

As was the case for our West Virginia trip last year, now that I have a good camp stove and related gear, I will probably aim for the two dinners to be one fresh grilled something and one pre-made frozen "thaw it and warm it up in the pot" kind of dish. But we shall see. Claiming (perhaps presumptuously) the role of camp chef, it will be a matter of pride that we eat well.

So I trust that it will all work out.

The more I type, the more excited I find myself becoming. I do love these trips. In the meantime, I will hope for warmer weather than we have now, and go think about what we might eat...