My husband has a Thing about packing light. Now I am a pretty light packer by most standards, I think, but my husband wants luggage to be streamlined like Amundsen's while he was mushing for the Pole. From his perspective I am like the White Knight, with extra can openers and parts for obsolete VCRs dangling from the sides of my pack. (NB: have never actually traveled with either an extra can opener or any VCR bits and pieces.) I have to say he's outdone himself this time. Six people, seven days, one suitcase, one backpack (ugly but with many nifty pockets), one waist pack.
I was planning to bring a small suitcase in addition to the medium suitcase, but Elwood said, "Two suitcases? Two?" He lobbied for taking less clothing and doing more laundry while we were gone. My plaintive sighs of "I don't want to do laundry that often on vacation" sounded like Scott saying, "What's a few more rock samples?" -- and we all know what happened to Scott and his rocks. I thought we might bring along some jackets, because there's some rain in the forecast and we had planned to spend time hiking. "Six jackets?" said he. "You want to take along six jackets?" You would have thought I was suggesting we pack six filing cabinets on a trek to Ultima Thule. I withdrew the suggestion.
So off we go, jacketless, with our absurdly small amount of baggage. We'll be back in a week, wearing freshly laundered clothes. Or maybe dirty clothes, because who wants to do all that laundry on vacation? Tell me this: are you a light packer or a kitchen-sink packer? How about the people you pack with? Any tales of packing woe?
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