Week Three - or how I learned to love snack food...

With the upcoming eclipse trip my husband I had planned, I needed to prep to have something I could eat that would survive unrefrigerated smushed in a backpack for 4 days. If you recall the staples from my previous two weeks, that meant I had quite a bit of work to do. In addition to planning to add foods that I can eat during the hike, I also need to continue to add one new food a day while on the hike.

I am already a rigorous label reader, I really like to know what is in the things that I eat, so I had a pretty good idea of some snacks to look for. In accordance with the foods I am allowed to start adding at this stage, I planned to add: corn, tuna, cocoa, salmon, broccoli, celery, and white potatoes. Since our plan was to see the eclipse about a 13 hour drive away, we knew we would be overnighting in a hotel along the way, and eating out at least three times during the drive (lunch, dinner, and the next morning's breakfast), so I needed to work on adding foods that were pretty common at non-fast food establishments. Before we left, I added corn, tuna, cocoa, and salmon. I got extremely lucky at our first stop - lunch - and was able to order plain salmon, and a steamed veggie medley which happened to be cauliflower (yes!), broccoli(the new food for the day!), and carrots(no...). I donated the carrots to my husband's plate; the plan was going well so far!

We made it to a good stopping point along the way, and chose a spot known for a variety of meats for dinner. I hoped that worst case I could get some fish (again....) and a side of plain broccoli. That plan did not work at all, however, they did have Cornish hen, which after some Googleing at the dinner table was verified to be a glorified chicken (yes!), but there were no suitable vegetables for offer. Protien only dinner it was, and once again, my husband got LOTS of great veggies donated from my plate. We picked a hotel with an included Starbucks for our one night on the way to our trailhead, which offered some decent options for a mostly-allowed breakfast. Their oatmeal is mostly oats, with a pile of additives, which were all going to be new for the diet... but I wanted to eat something! With oatmeal, a hard-boiled egg, and some coffee, I headed back to the room. We found that the hotel's nut-fruit medley was not the normal of a full-fledged standalone Starbucks, and instead consisted of walnuts, raisins, and cranberries. I stole all of the raisins from both of our shares, squeezed in a honey stick we brought for the hike, and had some of the celery that was the new food for the day. Mostly a success, and the addtives did not appear to have any negative effect on digestion or energy.

We continued on our journey to our parking spot in the middle of nowhere, quickly becoming very thankful that we had downloaded the offline maps, because service was a bit iffy (but honestly, far better than we expected). About an hour down a really long set of dirt roads, our first real excitement began. I was driving, and felt that I had drifted into some loose sand, but at that moment our truck started beeping low tire at us..... "uh oh." We pulled off, and sure enough, it was VERY VERY flat, having developed a ~2.5" gash across the tread. Luckily, we had a good spare, spent some time getting it back up to pressure with our emergency pump, tossed it on, and continued on our way. Thanks to the prevalence of eclipse traffic in the middle of NOWHERE there were actually quite a few very kind people who stopped to check on us and make sure we were alright and had everything we needed.

With our spare installed, we came to our next adventure. Google had decided that we were driving through a field, and that the road was a few hundred feet to our left, which was super obviously not the case. About this time, we came to what looked like a small stream or large puddle across the road that we were on. I was a little concerned that Google had lost its mind and that now we might actually be lost, but we turned on 4WD just to be safe, crossed the water, and soon after the road we were on started to match the road that Google thought we were on. Within a few miles (and a quick stop at the nearby campground to use the vault toilet), we had made it to our planned parking spot.

Here is where all of our previous planning kicked in. Using my limited ingredient list, we had managed to pack the following foods for our dispersed camping trip:
Fritos - made of corn, fried in corn oil, salty, and sturdy
potato chips fried in avocado oil - my husband tracked these down
super skinny fibrous celery
snack mix made of unsalted almonds, raisins, and salted pistachios
packaged tuna
canned salmon
canned chicken
honey sticks
instant coffee
and lots and lots of water

My husband, being the best sport ever, was willing to totally swap to my diet for the duration of the hike, which made sharing food a breeze. We packaged everything (except the snack-mix) individually, so I was able to add in the potatoes as a new food the first full day in the woods. We own a backpacking stove, so we did look at pre-packaged meals, but all of them had such a variety of ingredients that none of them were viable options.

Anyway... back to the hiking part of the story. We knew that we had somewhere between 3 and 5 miles to go before the forest opened up and there would supposedly be a meadow that we could camp in. Having hiked in the mid-west before, we knew to expect cows in the meadow area. What we did not expect was the sheer amount of cow patties that dotted every couple of square feet. After a bit of off trail hunting, we scored! A great little flat spot nestled between two trees up a pretty steep hill with very few cow patties! We found it just in time to leisurely set up our tent, have dinner (it turns out Fritos go REALLY well with canned salmon), and hoist our food bags up into a couple trees out of any sane bear's grasp.

I would by no means call us well-seasoned hikers, but the nights of our eclipse trip were the quietest I have experienced in any quasi-foresty area. While there were certainly some insect and bird sounds, they were few and far between once the sun went down. It was absolutely spectacular being away from any useful cell connectivity with no real plan other than hang around until the eclipse. In retrospect.. at least a deck of cards might have been a good idea....

As a recap, the new total of foods allowed from week three:
Proteins: Pinto beans, sole, egg, lamb, chicken, tuna, salmon
Starches: Barley, millet, amaranth, oat, corn
Vegetables: Cucumber, cabbage, asparagus, cauliflower, green pepper, brocolli, celery
Fruits: Cantaloupe, avocado, honeydew, grape
Dairy/Misc: Coffee, yogurt, American cheese, cocoa
Nuts/Seeds/Oils: Almond, pistachio
Flavor Enhancers: Vanilla, paprika, garlic, honey, cumin

On Sunday, it started to get a bit cloudy, and even sprinkled on us a bit, so we were a little nervous about being able to see the eclipse the next day. As the sun set, I made sure to pay attention to how the birds and insects reacted to the sunset, to see if they would act similarly during the eclipse, or if they would appear to be oblivious. Next week's entry will cover the eclipse itself, and the remainder of the trip, see you then.