Our studio space closed and after quickly looking around and with summer around the corner, I decided a home office was the best plan. I've been set up for a couple of months now and my clients and I love it! I am centrally located, there is free parking, the office has room to bring the whole family, children can play in the yard while a sibling or parent is being tested and I can always make you a cup of coffee or tea.
​Don't wait for ragweed season to hit, give me a call in early Aug and you'll have a much better fall season.

Day 1 
Thrasher Cove to Camper Bay
Thank our lucky stars that the rain stopped!  However, it rained for the previous 5 days so the theme for today was MUD! 

I am finally going to tell you some of the WCT highlights.  Wow, when I get out of a routine I really get out of it!  I am back at the blogging as my Feb. resolution.  Sadly, I failed with my Jan. resolution to drink more red wine with friends but I resolve to keep working on that one.
Here is a teaser picture of the trail, ladders, ladders, everywhere!

It almost made me cry to dehydrate my precious canned peaches from last summer.  However, it turns out that the girls love the dehydrated peaches and peaches will be a great treat on the trail.  Now it almost makes me cry to think of all the time that will go into making dehydrated peaches this summer for school lunches in the fall.

Do you remember the old commercial where pizza guy says "ever heard of origami?" Anyway, every time I see these dishes I want to say "ever heard of origami?"   These camp dishes are amazing.  I was told about them then found them on ebay in the UK then 2 weeks later "origami!"

I made you look!  I found these Dirty Girl Gators online.  If these don't give me energy and a laugh on the trail then the chocolate will!

My dehydrator has been running almost every other day for the last month.  I must admit I'm not doing it in the most efficient manner possible, I figured if I waited until I had a grand plan then I would never finish it all in time. I get an idea, cook it or buy it and then dehydrate it.  The most annoying part has been that by the time I can load up my dehydrator it's late in the afternoon or evening and there's no way it's going to be finished by bedtime, solution by Dennis - a timer!  Usually by about 5:00am the trays are done and then when I get up the food is cool and it's ready to be packed.  I have also found that it's better to start the process outside when the food releases most of it's cooking odours, then I bring it in before bed and set the timer and voila!

I have been called a "Gadget Girl" by more that one person in my life but frankly I can think of worse things to be called.  One of my newer gadgets is my dehydrator which I purchased under the guidance of my friend and expert hiker/tripper Dan.  When I purchased this gadget, hiking the West Coast Trail (WCT) wasn't even close to being on my radar, I just bought it for fun and healthy food experimentation.  ( I am a Holistic Nutritionist so store bought fruit roll up is only an option for decorating the birthday cake) When Dan found out I was going on this big hike and that I was just going to buy those foil food pouches he told me I "just had to" dehydrate my own food.  I knew he was right, but really, when was I going to prepare and dehydrate food for four people for 8 days??  Well there is never any "extra" time to add another thing to the list, so without a grand food plan for the 8 days but knowing fruit would awesome; plus Helen (a hiker) and my niece were over, we just zipped through two bags of apples in no time and plugged in the dehydrator.  Twelve hours later and several pictures emailed to Dan and our apples were declared dry and delicious!

I confess, I went back to the store and bought another pair of boots to try for a couple of weeks, I just kept having second thoughts.  One guy says "oh, you can wear running shoes", then another guy says "oh, you need a full shank."  Who's a girl supposed to believe?  Well this girl did a lot of research and tried on way too many pairs of boots and then finally decided to believe her own feet and judgement and went back to her first pick!  Oh, I also went to my cousin who's a pedorthist in town at BioPed and she helped me decide, it never hurts to go to a trusted source for more information.  She also made me an amazing pair or orthotics so if you need new ones, check out what Danielle can do for your aching feet.  So to all you people out there, trust your gut and your own feet but don't hesitate to drive the sales people crazy with your indecision.  Then go ahead and wear the boots outside!  I did it, I married my boots!

Today's picture is of the three books I'm using for research, along with the good ol' internet and my friend Dan who knows everything about camping.