Packing...

It's May 19 and we are busily preparing to go out and do a little test run before heading down the Middle Fork of the Salmon river on June first.  Just yesterday our truck which we were hoping would get us to the edge of the wilderness we plan to explore, broke down at the tire company in town where we were getting some advice about tire chains.  Better that it happened there and not out in the middle of nowhere, something which we are also familiar with.  Last year, out on a month-long filming gig, that truck broke down with a badly leaking transmission after chugging us slowly up and over two mountain passes and sixty miles from no where.  It ended up being a hilarious (at least in hindsight) adventure consisting of two days spent walking and hitch hiking (on the backs of one-person motorbikes over extremely rutted dirt roads, and with a couple of Boise State football players wearing nothing more than their underwear and layers of bandages from a fall into the river) our way back out of the wilderness.

  

Our plan is to head out on Friday of this week (May 22) to film for a week or ten days, then return to McCall to check in briefly before heading out on the river for the real beginning of our yearlong journey.  That way we can work out any kinks in our system (we haven't truly tested our solar charging yet, and are fairly dependent on it for re-charging camera batteries, sound equipment, computer for downloading footage... the list is endless).  Simple trip into the wilderness, right?  If we hadn't decided to try to film it all it sure would be a lot easier! :)

But we are very excited to finally be hitting the trails after two years of preparations.  This is the part we've been waiting for, and why we wanted to do it in the first place.

So, if we don't end up buried under mounds of camera gear and dehydrated food in the next few days, we will be off.  But I will try to check in one more time before we actually pack ourselves into Bessie (our trusty, or at least mostly trusty, truck) and head off.