You probably already read about how we left Denver with an uncomfortable amount of stuff crammed in our car. We left several things in Kansas City, but took on a few other things. But on the journey from KC to Missoula, we still had too much stuff.
I don’t like not being able to see out the back window when driving the car. It’s not a big deal on the highway, but it makes parallel parking impossible and getting around in cities just downright frustrating and unsafe.
Also, the daily routine of unpacking the car and then repacking it got to be a real grind. Really good travelers pack everything they need into one small bag they can carry everywhere. In fact, I’ve read about a couple guys who don’t even carry backpacks, but only owns things that will fit into pockets (here’s one of them). But obviously those people don’t have to carry around gear for sleeping, cooking, and cleaning in the woods; or video, audio, and photography equipment.
The grind of our daily unpack/repack cycle wore on me so much during our trip from Kansas City to Missoula that I had a bit of an emotional breakdown one morning in Wyoming over it. From that point forward, we agreed that I’d pack the big things into the car (especially the suitcases that are so heavy Beth can hardly lift them), and then Beth would pack all the little things that go around them. It turns out she’s really good at that, and actually enjoys doing it.
I know it sounds like a small thing, but having too much stuff just wore on me every day we were on the road toward Missoula. So once we arrived, I committed to myself to take on a major downsizing of our gear pile. I decided that we wouldn’t take on anything new unless we got rid of something else of the same size or smaller. And I made a list of things to get rid of in Missoula – my backup video camera, audio gear I don’t really need, extra winter clothes, etc.
Fate seems to be helping this ongoing shedding process some. During a particularly long hike in Yellowstone, one pair of socks spontaneously self-destructed. Later, I ripped a shirt on something and decided to just throw it out.
But I also found that we have duplicates of too many things. Once we were able to unpack everything and re-assess what we brought with us from Broomfield, I found that I had packed three sticks of deodorant. Why three? Well, when we were moving out of our house, there was the stick I was using day-to-day, there was the stick in my travel kit, and there was the stick in my workout bag. So rather than just throwing two away, I packed all three of them and brought them along. Likewise, between the two of us we brought with us eight – yes, 8 – boxes of dental floss. I’m not kidding you! I had three different bottles of Dr. Bronner’s liquid soap. We brought two bottles of camp fuel for our stove, because one is nearly empty. We have two or three different things that can open a bottle of wine. I think we have two can openers. And so on, and so on.
Fortunately, we burned through some of these duplicates here in Missoula. And I made a list of things to active work on to further downsize our “stuff”. For example, Beth used to have two sleeping pads rolled up together. Now she has one good one that takes up less than a third of the volume. We jettisoned our big (squeaky and leaky) ice chest and get a slightly smaller one (that also has better insulation). For the short camping trips we’re doing, we just don’t need that huge of a cooler, and the extra peace-of-mind I’ll have from a smaller gear pile is worth the expense of buying new, smaller, better things.
When we did car camping out of a Dodge Dakota, these sort of things didn’t matter. Camping out of a Prius is a whole other ballgame, especially when we’re carrying the rest of our possessions at the same time.
My ultimate goal has been to shed enough cargo so we can pack everything we own into the car and see out the back window. The real test will come tomorrow morning, as we re-pack the Prius to leave Missoula and head west toward Seattle.