​Odd habits packing for a trip?

[Guest]

I pack using an all-encompassing list that includes everything from car camping to cross country travel to wilderness tripping. I have a separate list for day paddling (one column) and hunting (second column), but anything possibly needed is on the big master list.

That’s not especially odd. But now, nearly finished packing for a bit of everything group trip, I have recognize some peculiar habits.

I stage everything I think I need from that list. And then, before I actually pack the truck, I always take a couple things off the table after some “what-was-I-thinking” contemplation of the pile.

After that contemplation I really like having the truck fully packed and organized a full day before I depart. And then I add some last minute bits and pieces, almost never the same excess I removed upon contemplation.

The boat of choice gets washed, mostly for an up close and personal inspection*. And then, if I am packing for a long duration trip, the canoe doesn’t go on the truck, it comes into the shop; there is always something to tweak or attend to, especially if it is a canoe I paddle irregularly.

I willingly and knowingly overpack clothes for car campers and truck travel. I never remove any truck packed clothing, but I always add some. Packing extra fleece when the sweat is dripping off my nose, even when I know the distant chilly forecast, remains counter-intuitive. See also shorts and tee shirts when I can see my breath.

Who cares, I have plenty of designed storage space in the tripping truck for excess clothing. Especially if I am heading 6 or 8 or 30 hours away to a different elevation or different clime. After shivering in snow along the Florida Gulf coast, and having to buy more shorts and tee shirts in North Carolina in February, I’m all in on bringing a full range of clothing in the truck. Plus if I’m stopping to do laundry on the road it better be at least two loads.

A temperature range of sleeping bags too.

My solo travel gear toting limit in the tripping truck is governed by how much won’t-need-it-soon gear I can stash behind the seats, and the more readily needed gear I can secure on the shelves and boxes built into the bed. And still have an open foam mattress to crawl into at will.

I tweaked a couple things on this trip’s boat of choice, a soloized UL kevlar Malecite, and improved the Igloo cooler that lives in the tripping truck bed. And I still have a lazy afternoon to screw around with last minute gear, group trip gifts and give aways. Woo hoo, what little group trinkets and treats have I forgotten?

One thing I (once again) did not do in a timely manner. I cut my fingernails short just before a trip, but I really, really need to do that before I start packing for a trip, not the night before. I split a nail stuffing or packing or stacking gear every dang time, and only then attend the nail clippers. Every. . . . .dang. . . . time; I am a slow learner.

 

[sweeper]

All great advice but I also clip toes before going.

 

[lowangle al]

Because I have limited time and energy during tripping season I recently changed the way I pack. I used to carry everything down to the garage and load my packs there. Now I bring my food and cooking equipment packs into the kitchen where they are more likely to get packed sooner than later. I also bring a Duluth pack up to the bedroom where my clothes, sleeping bags and pads are stored to make that easier. The one pack that is left is for camping stuff ,axe ,saw,tarp and tent, ect. and that stays in the garage.

It saves a lot of time and energy packing the bags where the stuff is by eliminating a lot of trips up and down stairs and it is also a good motivator to start the process. When I first started doing this I thought the wife would have a problem with having canoe packs in the house for a week or two, but she never even said anything.

 

[Odyssey]

My packing plans have changed. I no longer use the ample space in the basement family room for the trip staging. Why? Because those stairs are stupid hard on me trying to haul up our fully loaded packs and gear. I used to put on some cool music down there all by myself while I puttered along arranging and organizing, rearranging and disorganizing, having everything fully laid out across floor and furniture. Now I do all that in the diminutive dining room upstairs. A less efficient way of packing but far easier on the body donning pack and barrel and climbing ten feet of not so wide stairway up up up; now it's just out out out the door to vehicle. Let's not forget I start all this a week before departure, so I can play with packing plans at a leisurely pace. So now the items make the trek from basement to dining room in chosen groupings, all gear having already been edited. What stays? What goes? The cool music still happens.

The only thing that might be odd is my checking the lunar phases calendar before each trip. I try to plan a trip as near a full moon as I can. Those trips can be special. Our most recent trip this week was during a full moon, and was the most surreal ever. The moon was so bright we could see the sky a velvet blue, and the fall colours showed muted and dappled. It all looked like an impressionist painting, the soft nighttime breeze moving this wild natural art ever so subtly, with the sound of an ocean surf in the birches. The rippled lake waters were splashed with quicksilver, dancing in time with the swaying trees.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

I keep all my favorite canoe and camping gear, including all my commercial dehydrated meals and most of my necessary clothing, permanently stored in my magic bus van conversion. I'm always ready to go. If you're serious, you have to have a dedicated canoe vehicle. Too bad an increasing number of my body parts are no longer ready to go and have become undedicated.

 

[goonstroke]

All our camping gear (as well as random other stuff) is in an upstairs room in the back of our house. It's a kooky old house, and to get from that room to the front stairs you have to pass through a narrow doorway about 2' wide. I use a GG Traditional #4 pack, which is ~28x28" square. So, if I pack everything in the gear room, I've kind of built a ship in a bottle. I can awkwardly shuffle it through that doorway and then put it on, but it's not ideal. I haven't moved the assembly process to the dining room yet, but that time may come.