It's hard to know what to eat

I finally made a stab at meal-planning this weekend. Fortunately, I still have the plan I used for last year's 10-day trip, which will obviously be the foundation for this one. Unfortunately, I've never had to take charge of dinners before. Plus, I'm hoping to do all (or most, anyway) of my meals "from scratch" rather than using the prepared freeze-dried entrees. So that's going to take some more planning.

I've got breakfasts figured out. That's easy -- oatmeal with raisins most days, with Kind bars to substitute when I'm feeling lazy (or sick of oatmeal), plus coffee mixed with hot cocoa powder. Lunches need some fine-tuning, but I've got a lunch planned for every day of the trip. I'm sure I'll be moving stuff around once I put some more thought into the timing of resupplies. Here are my basic lunch plans:

1) Triscuits, salami, cheese (for as long as it lasts), dried fruit
2) Pita, peanut butter, cheese, dried fruit
3) Triscuits, tuna, cheese, dried fruit

I'll be throwing in a couple of bagels from resupplies and "fresh" fruit when I can. Yes, I'll be sick of cheese and dried fruit, but I can mix up the fruit, at least. And I know from previous experience that the above foods hold up pretty well on long trips. Even the cheese I should be able to use for three or four days.

For dinner, I hunted down 10 recipes that I think I can manage. I'll need to test them out -- hoping to have an awesome dinner party for my friends sometime soon. And whatever, if they all suck I can fall back on the prepared stuff.

So now I need to: confirm lunches; test and confirm dinners; SHOP for my resupplies; and get resupplies in the mail, hopefully in the next two weeks.

Today's hike was about 8 miles around Tilden. It was the first long(ish) hike I've done in Tilden, and my first totally solo (no Camper!), and it was fun. Tilden kind of sucks at trail-marking so I missed one key turn and hiked about a quarter mile in the wrong direction before turning around, but I always knew where I was (love having these PDF maps on the phone). I was even able to give directions to a group of boys who had no clue where they were -- and they had a map!

I hit the top of Vollmer Peak, which at about 1,900 feet is apparently the highest in the Berkeley-Oakland Hills. It was pretty boring, though. You take a steep, wide paved road (not open to cars, at least) to the top, where there's a large gravel lot and a giant antenna surrounded by a chain-link fence. There isn't even a bench to sit on. But you get a nice view of the bay on one side and Mt. Diablo on the other. Not worth a return, trip, I don't think, but I found some other trails that I liked. And it's all dog-friendly, so Camper's coming along someday!