don't leave home without it

we've been fairly dependent on this Rick Steves (travel guru character) for the gist of our travel preparations. he says up and down, backwards and sideways to "PACK LIGHT!" this, mind you, is a relatively foreign concept to us. i mean, we're not super high maintenance or anything, but drake does have a rather meticulous cleansing and bathroom ritual involving a multitude of products; what amounts to about a 40 pound travel toiletry bag. i'm not kidding. the reoccuring joke of every camping season is drake's "face basin" and the fact that every camping trip, without fail and regardless of circumstance, she's up at 2am in the morning boiling water by lantern light to create the appropriate face washing experience while everybody else is stumbling blind, dirty and drunk off to their tents. all this while drake screams repeatedly at me "erin rae - brush your f*cking teeth!!!"

so, "pack light" are words that we've been playing over and over again recently trying to figure out how we're actually going to accomplish this. drake approached me this evening with some "absolute essentials"... which i really can't protest (note photo above). we've been told that it was generally a significant increase in $$ to get hotel accommodations with "en suite" commodes. need i say that this was devastating news? and it goes without saying that we're now travelling in nothing less than 3.5-4 star hotels/B&B's with full "en suite" accommodations thanks to the fact that drakey has reminded me on numerous occasions of the infamous toilet scene in the movie "Trainspotting". you might have to use the whole packet of seat covers on that one. cheers!