Food I Pack on long walks
My first blog post is an answer to a friend of mines question on Tumblr. I want this to be the first post because these are questions that people often ask me.
licerice: how do you pack food etc on your long trips? have you ever ran out of food at a crucial time? have you ever been robbed while sleeping outside?
It’s a pleasure to see you in my inbox Licerice! Great questions, thank you! Well first let me start off by saying that I am first and foremost a city/suburb walker. This is my first love! I did not grow up camping or long distance trail walking. But, as my walking obsession grew it was natural to go this route, especially when I had exhausted my city explorations. So, all that to say that I am self taught in this regard, but I have learned some things from years of doing it.
I don’t cook food, So, no stove. This is because I am not really a camper type and do not know anything about all that. I bring stuff that is high in calories and fat such as cheese and dried cured meats like chorizo and saucisson. I always have a baguette with me. I have learned time and time again that sliced bread always gets smashed in my bag. I make a lot of sandwiches! I love bringing canned tuna. I always have peanut butter and a bottle of squeezable honey. I have found this better than bringing jelly because the plastic bottle is lighter and also it is so easy to just squeeze some out on the bread. If it is not too hot I bring butter. Often in the morning I will have a baguette with butter. One thing that is great with the sandwich method is that you can always get vegetables and put those on too. It is kind of a pain to make a salad, but it is easy to throw some lettuce,tomato , avocado, cheese and cured meat in a baguette. Olive oil is great to put on sandwiches for extra calories. On a few walks I have brought weight gain powder with me! The shit has like 1000 calories a serving and you just mix it with water. It is not the best for economics. I love bringing apples and bananas and avocado. You have to make sure not to smash them in your bag though! If I have the money I love to have breakfast bars and protein bars for snacks. Oh and how could I forget, it is always nice to have dried fruit and nuts!
Yes, I have run out of food and water many times! But never to where it was a major problem. I have never done a walk where I did not cross a town at least one time a day, So, lack of food has really been a problem because I can go days walking and not eating. But walking 8 hours in the hot sun with no water can be a major problem and suck so bad! If I am running out of water I always leave a little in my bottle for psychological comfort. There have been a few times where I thought I was going to have to flag down a car or ask some dude on a bike for water, but my need for water never outweighed my timidness.
There was a entire week on the Camino de Santiago where I had to walk 30 miles (50 km) a day and I had no money for food and no food. For one entire day all I ate was butter all by itself! Just bites of pure butter! I was so hungry it was not too bad actually! I had to eat out of trashcans when I arrived in towns. I had to do lots of what is called yogi-ing on the Appalachian Trail (I have never done this trail but I will some day and until then I love to read about it!) which is the art of getting people to give you things without outright begging for it. At one point, days with no real food and doing 30 miles a day in the rain sleeping outside with no tent, i met a group of 4 kind kind souls (a Spainsh man, a German couple and a Canadian girl) who asked me how I was doing and I just burst out crying. They ended up giving me money and food to finish my next week of walking with comfort.
I have never been messed with at all sleeping outside! Well I have been kicked out of door entrances before and had off-leash dogs come up and growl at me until their owner called them back to them. But i feel lucky I have never been robbed! Perhaps It is because I try to be totally hidden, or totally out in a popular public place. I actually feel very safe sleeping out in public. It gives me comfort that there are a lot of people around. I try to sleep in a place where either no one would find me, or where if they did something I could yell and there would be people all around to see what was happening.
Thanks for the questions friend!