If you have not read Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods,” let me recommend it now. It is perhaps the funniest book I have ever read, and I wonder if we are headed on our hike with equal measures of poor planning. I am packing today, tomorrow night, my dear husband and I will sleep on the trail! We probably camp and hike more than the average person, but we haven’t headed into the wilderness with every thing we need for survival on our backs much since we had children. So we have laughed as we dusted off our decades old supplies. We decided to adopt a hybrid approach between the new movement of ultra light backpacking, and the old standard approach, thus ensuring our packs will weigh a ton, but we will still be sleeping in a bag liner, and using a stuff sac filled with dirty socks as a pillow! I sawed the handle off my toothbrush, so I could take a paint brush, so if I can still lift my arms at the end of the days, I will try to do some studies.