17 September, Thursday

S, K, and I start off the day with a nice long pre-breakfast walk,
which is a good thing because it rains much of the rest of the day.
Apple cinnamon bread French toast for breakfast, then some more
grocery shopping to get the snack foods for hiking that we forgot to
pick up yesterday.

Snake goes off to work. K bakes a batch of graham cracker brownies to take along on our hiking trip, recipe courtesy of her Grandma. We call them depression brownies, because the recipe was developed during the Depression when eggs were generally unavailable. They are made with graham crackers, sweetened condensed milk, oil and chocolate chips. As they are
cooling, I add a batch of chocolate chocolate chip brownies. Hikers
can never have too many brownies. . . as long as they fit in the bear
canisters. Trail mixes are measured out and breakfast coffee mixes
likewise.

K’s friend, Liz, comes over to share dinner with us and to provide a
second opinion on the two batches of brownies. S, O, and I also share
another bottle of Quilters Irish Death, a yummy malty beer that goes
well with both our soup and our brownies. We are all in agreement
that the brownies will get us up the mountains.

Time to see if O and I can find our way past all the backpacking food and
clutter to our sleeping pads. I’m hoping we can get it all sorted out
for a trial pack tomorrow.