Thank you for your comments Trailrunner. I suppose this is a tough question to answer and only experience will tell us what we really need. We would like to cover about 8 to 10 miles a day. Maybe stop for a couple days at a nice lake. I was thinking that the down jackets might be overkill, but we can expect heavy afternoon thunderstorms so that's why we chose the rain pants and jacket. I'm hoping that our packs won't weigh over 35 lbs with food and water. We will do laundry if it's nice enough to dry our clothes out.