Day: August 10, 2022

For first time followers and anyone who has not explored our blog site, here is a brief tour:

As a follower, you are currently reading an e-mail containing our most recent post.

To see previous posts, find the Jimandi link, in blue, at the top of each post. Clicking on this link will take you to the Home Page of our blog, where you will find our latest post.

Previous entries can be found as you scroll down the Home Page.

At the top left corner of our Home Page, are 3 small horizontal lines. This is the link to our blog Menu. It contains additional information about us, our previous Caminos and the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in general.

The Menu items are links to various other Pages on the blog site that you may find interesting.

• Clicking on “Home”, returns you to the Main page with most recent posts.
• Clicking on “Camino 2022 … here we come“ gives a list of links to each of our Camino 2022 posts in chronological order.
• Clicking on “Trip Journals” is a chronological list of posts for each of our Caminos.

Please keep in mind, that every page on the site has the Menu link in the upper left corner, allowing easy navigation within the blog site… especially if you get lost!

Since mid-July, we’ve been preparing for the Camino.

We’ve been establishing a routine of going to bed at 9:00 p.m. every night to assure a good night’s sleep before getting up at 6:00 a.m. By 6:30 a.m. dressed and wearing our walking shoes/boots/sandals, we begin walking outside, in and around our neighborhood. We typically have walked 2-3 miles before returning home for breakfast. After breakfast, because of the extreme heat and humidity, we’ve driven to our local YMCA and walked another 2-2.5 miles around an indoor track. This has been to establish a routine, similar to what we will use daily for our walk across Spain.

In parallel, to our physical preparation, we have been identifying and gathering those items we will need to carry in our backpacks to support our 2-month, 500 mile walk. During the past week, we have been paring down to only essential items to minimize the weight we have to carry on our backs.

Preparations for Camino 2022 are essentially complete. The final tests have occurred in recent days as we loaded and weighed our backpacks (Linda’s at 21lbs and Jim’s at 23lbs) and walked with them to re-acquaint ourselves with the optimum settings and adjustments (after 3 years of non-use) to assure maximum comfort during our walks.

Yesterday, we received, via email, our approved Spain Health Control document. This, along with our passport and Covid Vaccination/Booster ID card will enable us to clear customs at the Madrid airport.

Tomorrow morning, we”ll drive to Charlotte where we will leave our car with our daughter, Amy, and then check-in at CLT for our flight to Madrid.