Yeah I agree. We've never had nice gear, always walmart gear when we camped back in Iowa and it was the experience of being out there camping that made us not care what kind of equipment we had.
But I realize camping in Idaho up in the mountains while backpacking everything in iscompletely different then what we're used too....and that's why we're SOOOOOOO Excited about doing it.
I'm going to have to go through what we can get buy with spending and put a certain % towards a certain piece of equipment and go from there.
I'm figuring from the sounds of it the Sleeping Bag would get the highest % of $ spent on it?
Then I'm guessing after bag it is Pack, Tent, Shoes, Clothing, Misc. gear...something like that.
Well probably be camping in Sawtooth Mountains for first few times since that's only a couple hours away. So if we can only go in summer, than that's better than nothing.


Also our son is doing very well now.
He was diagnosed with stage 4 Ewing Sarcoma cancer. It's a rare cancer that affects mainly children. Only 200 cases a year get diagnosed. He was given a 35-40% chance of survival.
He gets chemo every other week and we're in the hospital 3 to 6 days depending on what type of chemo they give him.
It's scary watching people hang up bags of poison in hazmat suits and then run that same stuff through your kids veins.
BUT
He's doing well, He's gone through half of his Chemo treatments and had radiation to his hip (main tumor) and his lungs (where it spread too).
The main tumor had shrank 90%! before the start of radiation on his hip and that was half way through his entire treatment. Treatment is supposed to last 8-12 months and he was diagnosed at the end of July; happen to be our middle childs birthday.
The Dr's like to mention how Amazingly well he's doing, and I just tell them it's in his genes, he can't help it.

Well that's about the jist of it. That's the very Short short short story with just the basics.
It's been a tough, long road, but like I say, We're human and adaptable.