Week Four - out of the woods...

Continuing from last weeks entry, and talking about the wonderful eclipse trip my husband and I had. I still needed to add one new food a day as part of the trip, and as far as the days we would be in the woods, that meant only one more: peanuts. I had packed a second snack mix, with all of the same ingredients as the first, but with the addition of unsalted peanuts. Problem solved.

Now that we got the food talk out of the way, what about the rest of the hike? We pick up on Monday, the day of the eclipse! When we awoke, the sky was as clear as could be, not a cloud in sight! We started to pack our tent and retrieve our lofted food supplies. We made sure to leave out our camp chairs and enough food for lunch, and transferred all of the water in our tanks to the reservoirs in our packs. As an aside... we did bring water filtering bottles, but after seeing the sheer amount of cow poop that would get washed into the only nearby stream, we opted to stick with our hefty supply that we toted in.

It turned out that our timing was just about right; the eclipse began as we were finishing attaching my sleeping pad to my pack (did I mention that Osprey packs are amazing... sooo many easy ways to attach things to the exterior). We pulled out our eclipse glasses and took a seat to enjoy the show. There were a few things that struck me the most about the event. ALOT of the sun had to be covered before it was really noticable that it was darker outside. The grasshoppers that had been VERY vocal during the days of our trip did start to settle down abit, but the birds did not start their usual evening serenade. As soon as the moon completely covered the sun (we did not drive 14 hours to not be in the path of totality after all), we removed our glasses. We were able to pick out three really distinct sheer, thready, wavey-ish emenations from the sun, something neither of us had ever seen. They were really quite beautiful, even just to the naked eye. After the totality subsided, we had a quick lunch and started to hike out, with the hope that maybe even with 5 miles of hiking in front of us we would beat the traffic.

We of course took a few breaks along the way to check on the progress of the eclipse (which also doubled as nice water breaks). Soon we were back into the forest, and making good time, especially with our lighter packs. But....... on the way out I managed to catch a small unstable rock, in some loose dirt, and really spectacularly roll my ankle externally and drop to the ground. Usually my husband is the one to toast his ankles on hikes (he has a history of weak ankles), but I did a pretty good number and heard it pop on the way down. My ankles are pretty noisy even on a good day, so I was not *too* worried, but I did have to take a short break before continuing. We had about three miles left to go, which passed without incident. We made it back to the truck, changed into flip-flops, and made a bee-line back to civilization. There was still not much traffic on the dirt roads, but once we hit pavement it was a very very different story. What should have taken about four hours ended up taking nine. Even with the significant traffic delay, everyone on the road was incredibly civil, willing to let people hop lanes back and forth (which was the most exciting thing we could do since the cell towers were obviously overloaded), and we even saw many families picknicking on the side of the road.

Despite all of the traffic we were easily able to find a room on our return trip, and I was able to add in bananas the next morning, which were that days new food. On the way back, now that I had added in peanuts and white potatoes, we made a stop by Five Guys, since they fry in peanut oil! After a few days in the woods, those fries tasted pretty darn amazing (not that they are shabby on a normal day). After making it back home (still rolling on the spare tire), I still had a few more foods to add for the week in addition to the peanuts and bananas: coconut, hops (I bet you can guess where this is going), cheddar cheese, and spinach. I wanted to get coconut added to give a common household oil, and to enable coconut cream as an ingredient. Hops were for beer. Since I was already able to have Barley, as long as I stick with barley and hop beers (no wheat), then my love of trying new micro-brews can return. Cheddar cheese allows chicken/cheese enchiladas, and spinach finally adds in a nice green leafy veggie.

Now my diet is starting to look more like something I can manage on travel, which is good since I was planning to be on travel for the next two weeks. 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, white potatoe
Vegetables: Cucumber, cabbage, asparagus, cauliflower, green pepper, brocolli, celery, spinach
Fruits: Cantaloupe, avocado, honeydew, grape, banana
Dairy/Misc: Coffee, yogurt, American cheese, cocoa, cheddar cheese
Nuts/Seeds/Oils: Almond, pistachio, peanut
Flavor Enhancers: Vanilla, paprika, garlic, honey, cumin, coconut

As a spoiler alert.. next weeks travel assists in the demise of this, until now, well structured experiment.