As Jordon mentioned today at the Jordon Cooper Outfitters, I gave him a copy of Survive! by Les Stroud for Christmas and as a family have all enjoyed the book tremendously.

Today there was quite a snow storm in Saskatoon and since I am horrible for making and carrying out plans (it’s to the point where it is almost like a psychological disorder), I was just going to waste away another weekend with doing absolutely nothing more than puttering around (this drives the boys insane)  This afternoon Jordon got us all together and decided to see if we could get to Dollarama without getting stuck (there was so much snow the city transit was shut down).  We made it there fine and we picked up some stuff for the cabin.  Now as stupid as it sounds to do this in a blizzard in January, it did brighten up the day quite a bit and let us think about much warmer days at the lake.

While we were out, we talked about our emergency kits in each of the vehicles.  They are uneven in quality and we added a couple of things while in Dollarama, first aid kits, some more winter gear, some water bottles,  and other assorted gear that we have seen Stroud use on Survivorman or read about in Survive!.

One of my favorite finds to put all of this stuff in was some $2 backpacks that are big enough to hold our winter gear and yet small enough to be tossed in the trunk of the car without taking up much space.  They aren’t exactly high quality but they are two dollars and since they aren’t plastic, the won’t be affected by the Saskatchewan winters.   We bought one for gear and one for our emergency kits for each of the vehicles so we can pack and go without having to worry if we run into some trouble along the way.  While we have an Eddie Bauer Essential Hiking Daypack Bottle in each vehicle, the bag works really well to carry the stuff the bottle doesn’t or needs to be topped up with more supplies for our family.

In addition to getting some emergency kits put together for the cars, we bought some stuff for our dopp kits as well as some stuff for a guest kit.  This is for those friends of ours who come up and stay but always forget something.  Well, I may be projecting there as I am the one that always forget something (I actually forgot to pack pants one time to the cabin).  The good news is that if you are my friend and come up to the cabin and forget something, we will have it there for you and I won’t judge you.

We also bought some supplies for the kitchen; a new colander, milk container for tea, and some oil and vinegar containers and packed them all up into some heavy duty plastic containers which will go a long ways in making a difference how I will store goods this summer.