Well, I packed everything, well almost everything, and it sort of, well, almost sort of, fits... I think.

I had to drop a couple of items and I don't have water in there yet. Hopefully my 4-liter water bladder will still fit on the top there somewhere. I am bringing another 2-liter bladder but that will start off empty so it won't take any space, I think I will only need it for the hike out. I also have 2 one-liter bottles and I don't know where those are going. Those will be for the hike in tomorrow and dinner tomorrow night. I think the 4-liter bladder is over-kill for the hike in but I will also use some of that for breakfast and I don't like under-estimating water.

The case for my 70-300mm lens would not fit anywhere so I ran out and picked up a padded water bottle and stuff sack to put it in. I also picked up the same for the fish-eye lens because the sack it came in does not provide much in the way of protection. I still have yet to try to attach the camera to the front of the backpack. I am going to do another dry (wet) run will the water bladder full and see how things work.

I have an incredible amount of food for 7 days and I also still need to figure out what I am going to do for dinner tomorrow night and breakfast on Thursday since those are extra and were not part of the original plan. Perhaps I can just tie a sack to the back of the backpack with some food for those meals. I only have 3 relatively easy miles to cover to camp tomorrow afternoon.

I need to go and pick up the satellite phone at 9 tomorrow morning and then come back to the house and try to figure where that is going to go. Hopefully it's not very big. The only ones I've seen are about 2-3 times the size of a cell phone. If it's much bigger then that then I've got a problem.

A lot of my space problem will go away after the first few days, once I start consuming food, but until then things are very tight. I still don't know for sure what I am doing for food for tomorrow night and Thursday morning. Perhaps I should just pig out for breakfast and lunch tomorrow and then not worry about those other meals. Hadn't really thought about that but it's an option. Unfortunately I look forward to the meals in the Canyon, especially dinner at the end of the day when there is nothing else left to do except watch night fall on the Canyon. I'll figure out space place to put it.

One thing I noticed is that even with the pack stuffed to the brim it doesn't feel that bad. It seems to fit me better now that I have lost some weight that's for sure. I had to tighten up the waist belt by a few inches over what it was set to for the last trip... in May of last year.

This afternoon I went down to Old Town Flagstaff and wandered around for a little while. I wanted to get some walking in since I really hadn't done anything today. It was a beautiful afternoon with temps in the low to mid 60s, nice bright blue sky with a few puffy white clouds.