Getting Close - Only a Few Weeks to Go

 3 September 2018

The days grow short as we are now just a few weeks away from starting the Camino de Santiago in Spain.

This week we bought our backpacks. We decided to get Kelty brand Redwing 44-liter backpacks. They are large enough to hold what we really need but too small to pack lots of extra items that would only add weight. We loaded up the backpacks with everything we plan to take, and the weight was about 15 pounds total for each pack. We think we can manage that weight for our 200-mile pilgrimage trek.

Now we start the training walks with our backpacks on. We've already done about 350 miles of training walks over the past 4 months, but none of it was done with backpacks. With our loaded backpacks, we did 6- and 7-mile short training walks earlier in the week and did not feel too much stress. However, today we went for 12 miles with our backpacks on a walk up to the volcanoes on the west side of Albuquerque, and we really felt every ounce in our legs and backs (despite all the hundreds of training miles we have put in to this point). Hopefully we have enough time left to work out any remaining kinks and soreness before our actual Camino begins.

Each pack (empty) weighs 2 pounds and will hold just the right amount of gear for our pilgrimage trek.

Testing the packs (fully loaded) on our training walks.

We included everything we plan to take on the Camino during our training walks.

We found this handy app for our cell phone that tracks our mileage and plots where we have been on a map. We plan to use this during the Camino de Santiago.

'Run Tracker' cell phone app that keeps track of mileage walked and plots our course on a map. This is the course through the desert and city that we walked today.

We are extremely careful about how much we pack with us. For me, my favorite gear for the Camino are my NorthFace, super-lightweight, Gore-Tex boots (model Fast Pack II GTX). I picked these up in Lima, Peru, in April 2018, and they are sooo comfortable. They feel like walking in house slippers, even after many miles on the trail. So far, I have put about 350 training miles on these boots, and they still look new.

 North Face hiking boots will help make the Camino de Santiago a good journey.

I will also be taking these Atika hiking sandals to change into after a long day in my boots. Actually, these are superb hiking sandals, and I have already put a few hundred miles of walking on them.

Atika brand hiking sandals - my go-to footwear after a day of walking in my boots.

Aside from the boots and sandals, we are each packing two or three changes of clothes, light jackets and rain ponchos, and minimal cosmetics. Since we are sleeping in beds (just matresses with a sheet) in the pilgrim hostels, we are each bringing a blanket. We will eat in the hostels, so there is no need to bring food or cook gear. Water is plentiful along the trail, so we don't need to bring more that a water bottle that we can refill during the day.

And so we count down the days until we fly to Spain. We are both excited (and a little afraid). Our training has given us strength and confidence, but there is always the unknown when facing an adventure of this magnitude.