Preparations and List Making

Today was the final day to make preparations, and buy any supplies needed for our hike. My husband Duane, a great list maker, made a list of all of the things we would not want to forget on our trip.

Meanwhile, I made preparations of my own by doing the household chores and ran several errands around town, not only for myself, but also for Duane, our son, and his weekend caretaker, Uncle Dave.

Among the many things I did today:

• I visited the Good Feet store in Campbell and had my right orthotic adjusted. It hasn't felt quite right on the last couple of hikes. I wore my hiking boots with my orthotics in them all day to ensure that my feet would remain comfortable and used to the orthotics.
• I made a last minute trip to REI, where I purchased myself a sweatband. After the last couple of hikes, I decided I was really tired of sweating into my glasses. I purchased a wicking sweatband. Duane also wanted a new sweatband, but unfortunately there was only one selection for wicking sweatbands and this one was too small to fit his head. He will have to make do with the one that he has. I also picked up some sports beans of the kind that Duane likes.
• While at REI, I also happened to see some neck-cooling bandanas of the kind that mentor Deb was handing out at Mission Peak. At that time, I declined to take one, but today I reconsidered since that sounded like a really good idea. These bandanas have little water-absorbing beads sewn into them. You soak them in water for twenty minutes and they swell up, holding cool water for days at a time. The water keeps the neck cool and you comfortable while hiking. Since the one that Deb gave Duane split at the seams (unfortunately, he didn't realize he couldn't leave it in water indefinitely...), so I picked up one for him too in his favorite colors - teal and turquoise.
• I did all of the laundry so there would be no issues of the clothes we wanted to take not being clean and ready to be packed.
• I visited Costco and picked up some VitaRain vitamin water as well as some bottled water. We'll use the bottled water for our hydration packs.
• I shopped at Safeway for our favorite flavors of Gatorade.
• Stopped in at Barnes & Noble to purchase our son some activity workbooks for the car.

Later on, we laid out all of our gear on the kitchen table after dinner, and packed our packs, except for those last minute items. In the course of doing this, we noticed that Duane's hydration bladder had something yucky growing in it that was making his water taste awful. I took his bladder, filled it about halfway with water and then poured some bleach into it. We let it sit in the bladder for half and hour, then turned it over and let it sit again for another half an hour. Duane then rinsed his bladder out so there wouldn't be any bleach residue. If this doesn't work, he's going to have to buy a new bladder tomorrow on our way out of town, but he said it tastes fine.

All I have to do tomorrow morning is throw some clothes in my suitcase and we'll be out the door! Yosemite, here we come!