The packing is always the hardest part of the journey

Hello friends!

It has already been a full day as it is my morning to volunteer to prep foods at the sweet cafe our church houses. After that I ran and got a few groceries and glory be to God, it is finally raining here in the heartland. 

So I hurried my soggy self home and unloaded what needed to be refrigerated and now I want to make sure you have something to read if you stop by today, cause I have missed you!

I want to share some details about our travels for two reasons.

First, I personally enjoy reading and hearing about other people’s trips and adventures and I hope you feel the same. Second reason, it helps me process all we saw and did and this is a blog about my journey after all…and travel is part of the trek for me and I love to share it with you. 

To begin my little “What we did on our Summer Vacation” posts, I wanted to share a little about packing for this trip.

I am notorious for over-packing. I play out every possible scenario we might encounter and have several options for each. Then there is the “mood dressing” issue, which apparently I passed on to our eldest child because she commiserated with me on how I overcame it for this jaunt. 

Since we were not checking bags, I was limited to a small suitcase and a carryon that I could squeeze under the seat in front of me. I chose a mesh black bag that can hold as much as a small suitcase, but is remarkably flexible to fit the required storage space allotted. 

I used a technique taught to me by a dear friend who has traveled many a trip to Kenya. Kelly uses packing cubes, I believe, but I went the cheap route and used ziplock bags. Since we were mostly hiking or sightseeing, my clothing was limited to shorts and summer tops. 

Calculating each day, I shut off my imagination of how things and weather might change and I packed bottom, top, underpinnings and a pair of socks in a bag for each day. I squished all the air out of them so they were as small as possible and made a stack. 

Believe me, the desire to second guess myself was powerful but I overcame it. 

I set out one travel outfit for going and coming, added a long sleeve shirt, water proof jacket, white jeans, athletic pants, pjs two extra socks and one extra set of underwear, a change of shoes and two hats. 

It all fit easily into the suitcase along with an empty back pack for hiking. I even had room for my curling iron in it.  I put my two small bags of makeup and toiletries in my carry on bag. 

I limited myself to a small journal for taking notes, my daily prayer book and a paperback I am working on finishing. Again, it was a challenge to take a small amount of reading but it was truly all I needed or had time for.

The beauty of the packaging of outfits is you simply put the dirty back in the next day’s bag and remove excess air. It makes repacking so much easier.

By pairing down what I took, I was able to fit a small bag of gifts in my carry on to bring back home.

For travel clothes, I wore a knit dress I got from The Loft before vacation. A Lou and Grey, drawstring at waist and nice length. Of course I wore bike shorts under it because Caroline has taught me you must always wear shorts in case someone pulls your dress up or you want to do the monkey bars.

I had a denim jacket for warmth if needed and a small cross body pack that I could throw in my carryon before boarding because …. air regulations mandate no more than two items and I am compliant.

This may be a no brainer for some of you, but this was an amazingly freeing way to travel for me. I found I was able to use my long sleeve shirt and rain jacket as needed for grabbing dinner at the end of a day of hiking or sight seeing.

I was able to use the white jeans for our Red Sox game and then for a nice dinner for our last evening in Bar Harbor.

None of it was how I would dress at home, but it worked fine for traveling.

Okay…I am done. Tomorrow I will share some photos and fun stories.

Be blessed and enjoy the rain if you are in the Midwest today!