Outta Here! Just a little more hand-wringing...

We're outta here on Thursday--bound for Costa Rica and the Panama Canal, with stops in Panama City, Puerto Limon (CR),  New Orleans, Key West, and Miami.  A land trip for the first week and then a cruise.


I'm packing, meaning  trying to talk myself out of taking so many clothes. Sometimes I've done primitive sketches in my travel notebooks (often involves Crayolas) of the clothes I've taken on a trip, and that's been  helpful.  What did I wear all the time?  What was dumb to take? (Lots.)

 Note the number of black tops.  It gets boring.

For me, there are three major categories to cope with pre-trip:

1. Paper.  This includes torn-out pages of guidebooks, maps, vouchers, receipts, etc.  That all goes into a big manila envelope. As we work our way through the stack during the trip, I toss as much paper as I can bear to (you never know!)

Then there is a minutely-detailed itinerary, which I carry in my handbag.  The one for this trip is 2-1/2 pages.  Hotel addresses, phone numbers, room rates, flight numbers,  reservation numbers, shore excursions, you name it.

 The envelopes for this trip

Envelope for a past trip:  they get pretty beat-up

2.  Electronics.  Batteries, chargers, cords.  I'm taking a minicomputer, Walkman, cell phone, and camera.  I keep chargers and cords in this thing, which is really meant for jewelry, of which I take almost none:

I used to throw them all in a Ziploc bag, where they got tangled up.

4. Clothes.  See above.  First step is to wash a bunch of stuff, then try it on and see if the waist fits.  If not, no-go.

I'm going to be posting about our trip on Travelpod.com    If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll probably get an e-mail reminder with a link to the latest post.   Or e-mail me, and I'll put you on the list.  Or go to www.travelpod.com and type in "LRandal."  Or don't bother (really, you have my permission to skip the whole thing!).

Au revoir!