We love food!

FOOD! FOOD! GLORIOUS FOOD! 5000 - 6000 calories of it DAILY! Never before in our lives have we eaten this much food (minus a few binges here and there), and the fact is we will not be able to eat as many calories as we are burning! The result of this will be seen as our emaciated selves return in six months time (picture Mr.Burns thin!). Food will be the thing we think about most, talk about the most, and dream about the most. What will our next meal be and when do we get to eat. This without a doubt is one of the things we do the most (after walking). As tough as this challenge is going to be we are willing to tackle it with mouths wide open, sporkful after glorious sporkful!

We took a picture of our first six days of food. Missing from the picture is our lunch's (to be purchased at the last possible time before departure), instant coffee (oh so important), oil (only for the purpose of adding calories), and seasonings! In all, we are carrying about 2 pounds of food each day for a total of 24 pounds of food!

                                              Nick dreaming about eating all our food!

A typical days worth of food would look like this:
Breakfast
2 packs instant oatmeal (250 cal) + meal replacement shake (150 cal)
Snacks
2 granola bars (440 cal) + 1 cup of chocolate (~900 cal) + 1 cup of nuts (~800 cal)
Lunch
2 pitas/wraps (400 cal) + a lot of peanut butter (250 cal)
Dinner
one dehydrated dinner pack each (600 cal)

So for the mathematicians out there that is still less then 4000 calories and that is where the oil comes in. Sounds gross but adding oil adds calories without much weight! Along with this we will be binge eating at every possible chance! I am counting on the American style all-you-can eat buffets to fill in some of our calorie deficits!

I am guessing that with food being numero deux on our minds (after walking) we will be blogging about it much more in the future, so look forward to hearing about some tasty concoctions we come up with on the trail! Also, family, friends, and others, feel free to mail us any delicious, tasty, high calorie food you think we might enjoy. Just message us to find out the address of the nearest post office off the trail! Much appreciated!

Today was the official one week mark to our departure. The anticipation has been building for well over a year but as the karate kid reminds us "patience young grasshopper".

 

Our bags are packed and we're ready to go...well not quite yet. But we're a few steps closer to our big hike now...

In prepping for the AT one of our biggest concerns was how to get to the start. After searching every possible flight down, we decided to take the trusty ol Greyhound (woot woot haha) from Detroit to Atlanta. It's a long journey - 16 hours - but luckily it's during the night. And of course the tickets were half the price of the plane tickets - $156.45 in total. So it's booked and we'll be departing April 5th, arriving in Atlanta at 10am April 6th. The next step was getting from the city to the trail, which turned out to be fairly easy to organize thanks to the ATC website. A shuttle will be picking us up right from the Greyhound station and taking us to Springer Mtn. If all goes smoothly we should be on the trail to the Trail (yes, there's an 8 mile hike up to the start of the AT) by 2pm-ish - fingers crossed.

Next was our packs...which we've almost got down to the perfect configuration and weight. So far our pack base weigh is 25lbs each, that's not including food and water. Check out the picture of all we have to carry! Missing from the picture is our tent, towel, and a few other odds and ends.