June 29, 2015 at 02:11PM by advodna_dave

Heading out the Denali Park Road to the Teklanika Campground felt a bit like preparing for a backcountry trip. Well, sort of. I mean, instead of packing freeze-dried food into ziplocs, we were making sure we had enough fresh bananas and strawberries for our morning oatmeal. Instead of trying to figure out how our sleeping bags had ever fit into those tiny stuff sacks, we were realizing that we'd have to drive 20 minutes outside of the park to fill our propane so we could keep the trailer nice and toasty. Instead of tightly rolling up two pairs of underwear and a small bottle of Dr. Bronner's soap, were taking long, luxurious showers in the visitor center parking lot before we did one last dump of the tanks. And instead of tearing out pages that we'd already read from books to save weight, @advodna_ann had her phone's camera set up in the back bedroom capturing streaming video from her laptop of a workout program she'd subscribed to so she could do them once we were out of cell service range. I *may* have changed the angle of the camera a little while I was back there getting ready for my shower, just to give her a little mid-workout treat. 😉 As long as those videos aren't automatically uploaded to Photostream, no one else will... Oh crap, gotta go delete something real quick. Okay, I'm back. What was I saying? Oh yeah, the backcountry. Anyway, with a shower every other day for us and a bath for the kids, we tend to need to dump (gray water at least) every third day, and that usually includes adding the contents of the two 6 gallon portable jugs we keep filled in the truck. That's 39 gallons onboard plus 12 more. We only have a 39 gallon gray tank, but those extra gallons basically go to drinking water and down the toilet into the black tank. Anyway, 51 gallons/3 days is 17 gallons a day, a little over 4 per person, not bad compared to the national average I've seen listed as 100, though we have a lot less landscaping to take care of. Still, to make things stretch to 5 days, we'll need to catch some gray water from the sink and dump it into the black tank and let's just say, hygiene may have to slip a bit. "Camping" is *hard.* 😉 #airstream