Capstone Prep and Day 1

Welcome to the blog for first few days of my capstone trip!

On Tuesday May 20th Ella and I met to get our groceries and prep our food. Our first and main stop for food was Trader Joes where we got a mix of fresh fruits and veggies and pre-made frozen meals. One of our goals for this trip was to make fun and delicious meals over the fire. We had the additional challenge of finding meals that could be delicious and filling while also being vegetarian, but luckily Trader Joes had us covered and we were able to get most the items on our list. We then made a quick stop at Walmart to get our last few items, the most difficult to find being the plant based hot dogs (they're no where near the regular hot dogs). After obtaining all of our groceries we returned to my house to wash, chop, and prep all of our food to make our trip as easy as possible. The main thing was dicing up all of our veggies (onion, mushroom, pepper, and tomato) so we could just plop them on the pan when tired from a day of hiking. We also prepped a mixed fruit container so we had an easy snack and less dishes to do with freezing water from the hose spigot. Then Ella went home and we both spent the night packing and showering to prep for our trip!

Our site at Nerstrand!

The next day, Wednesday May 21st, was the day! I had pulled out all my camping stuff and was trying to decide what all we needed, while also making sure it would fit in my small car. In the early afternoon I headed over to pick up Ella and all her gear, then we went back to my house and packed our gear and food. After this we left for Nerstrand State Park!

Luckily the drive to Nerstrand is pretty easy and only a bit over an hour drive, so us leaving a bit late was fine... or so we thought. On our way we stopped to get Subway for dinner as we knew we were not going to be making a fire or cooking that night, because at that point it had been raining all afternoon. Based on our weather apps we thought maybe there would be some sprinkles or rain here and there during set up, but oh were we wrong. Luckily we got there was it was still light out and went to scope out the site, cart-in 4. The site itself was super pretty and spacious, but as the name implies, you have to bring all your stuff through the woods on a cart.

Ella in the rain with our tarp covered cart.

This started our adventure of the night as it was still raining and we would need to bring our sleep stuff and clothes all the way to the site keeping it as dry as possible. So we started by filling the cart with our tent and tarps. After we had set the tent up we came up with a solution to guard our stuff from rain, a tarp below and a tarp above on the cart. This worked pretty well with the exception that the cart was covered in mud and that it everywhere. At this point we were pretty much in the complete dark and walking though muddy puddles on every trip to the car. Finally after way too long and too wet of a set up, we called it good for the night and got our pajamas on and went to sleep.

Our cart!