Gearing Up!

We are gearing up for another adventure. . . this time no jet zipping us from place to place, no gourmet meals, no 5 stars hotel. . .we are headed for France and Switzerland to hike the Haute Route for 10 days.  The great thing about this trip is we are hiking from chalet to chalet each night. . . no tents and no carrying all our gear each day!

We have begun packing and making sure all our gear is ready to go!

This is the staging area for packing and you can see little Greta in the middle of the mess making sure we don't go without her!  She and Louie will be attending "camp" at Josie's for 15 days.

Jeanna makes sure she has enough snacks for the trip!  We are afraid of having no protein at breakfast so we have added Jiffy peanut butter to the snack bag.  I have not packed my bags of snacks yet but I will remember to add some little snack size Hershey's bars. . . nothing like chocolate at higher altitude!

I am sporting a new pair of hiking boots. . .my last pair were left in Peru so I was forced to break in a new pair!  I wore them to hike to the gorillas so they are broken in a little bit but will be wearing them on and off all week to get them ready!

We have our packs from Kilimanjaro and Machu Picchu all ready to be packed for the hike.  The other important piece of gear are our hiking poles!  They take so much pressure off of your knees going down hill.  We will need them on this trip because we are doing a lot of ups and downs!

One of the most important organizational items in our packs - the bathroom bag!  We have Charmin To-Go, Pee Cones, wet wipes and hand sanitizers!  The pee cones are a great invention so you can go in the trail without totally disrobing!

We are excited for this trip!  Five of our friends are joining us so we should have a great time.  There will be much singing of the tunes from "Sound of Music" as we cross the Alps!  I am hoping to blog every couple of days from our Swiss Chalets!