If we had a pet, it would know we are going somewhere

Tomorrow we are heading to the Olympic city of Beijing. We hope to claim a good spot to watch the marathoners come by in 2008, so we're taking the tent, sleeping bags, Whisperlite stove, and enough dehydrated mushrooms to last 946 days.

Okay, lame joke. Sorry.

We’ll only be there for a few days before we head down to the Yunnan Province with all of the above items (excl. the mushrooms which I am well and truly sick of) for some trekking.

Josh began planning the details of this trip a week after we arrived in China. To go this long without backpacking has made him a little CRAZY. This morning he was dizzy with excitement as he pulled out his gear. He slid from room to room in his socks looking for flashlights and Ziplocs, making lists, announcing that he had “just had a thought”. I could hear him laughing and talking to himself in the other room while he folded, stuffed and rolled.
He does have some really impressive gear. The compression sacks are my favorite; I have eaten burritos bigger than the current dimensions of his sleeping bag.

We will be high in the mountains thick in the jungles of S. China--a stone's throw from Vietnam and Laos--for more than 20 days.
Link to a map: http://www.warriortours.com/images/map/chinamap.gif

Until then...I bid you zai jian!