Monday, September 7th, 7:30 pm

The storage shelf did not arrive today, so Plan B is now in effect: it will be shipped overnight to Columbus, Ohio, where I’ll have an INEOS dealer install it for me on Thursday. Timewise, this may actually work out better. If it does not arrive there in time, Plan C (go ahead wihtout it) will work out just fine.

The Grenadier is packed—literally and figuratively—except for the Wardrobe, Stuff Box, Office, and Personal Bag. I’ll pack those over the next two hours. At the first or second camp, I’ll move the tent and camp chair to the roof rack, since I can’t get out of my garage with them up there. And once the storage shelf is installed, it will free up considerably more sleeping and living space for Annie in the rear, along with giving me some much-needed additional storage.

That means that at each camp, all I’ll need to do is:

1. Unload the Wardrobe, Stuff Box, and tarps/poles — 5 minutes.
2. Set up the tarp if it is raining or rain is expected — 15 minutes.
3. Get the chair down from the roof rack — 5 minutes.
4. Remove the kitchen and set it up — 5 minutes.
5. Inflate the mattress — 1 minute.

Total: 31 minutes, down from about 90 minutes when I had to set up the tent.  I’ll still set up the tent whenever I’m staying at a campground for two or more nights. After all, it’s really not camping unless you’re in a tent—especially when it’s raining and you can hear the pitter-patter ---sometimes poudinf--- on the rain fly.

I now have campsites reserved, roughly 250 miles apart, for the next six days, taking me through Perry Lake in Kansas, which gets me close to where I’ll pick up the Donner Party trail. The Donner Party left Springfield, Illinois, on April 15, 1846, and eventually assembled at Independence, Missouri, where the westward journey really began. There isn’t much of a record of exactly how they traveled between Springfield and Independence, so Independence is where I’ll begin following their route in earnest. And perhaps I will turn northwest at Fort Bridger instead of  southwest and the Donner Party did, hopefully for a happy ending.

This  is the trip I planned to take with Donner in 2021, but had to turn back aftre two days when his illness started to appear.   He will be missed on this trip,  but he will be with is in spirt.  Here he is shown with the Donner Party in 1846.

After Day 6—technically Day 11 if I include the five-day shakedown trip, although I don’t think I’m going to count that anymore—I’ll play it by ear and decide where to go next. I hope to be back in DC before October 11 to use the ticket I have for MacBeth at the Met in NYC on that date.

Ed and Annie