So last week the family and I went on a short out of town shopping "vacation". Now to elaborate, our town is fairly remote...not really remote as a lot of other communities up in Canada's north, but fairly remote as pertains to shopping. Everything in my town is very expensive and when trying to prep as a hobby you find it hard to purchase stuff when it cost five to tens times the cost every other prepper is paying. So people in our very northerly towns travel, in this case eight hours, to shop in a neighboring "civil" town. So in my town you would never catch me buying any of the stuff I bought while on this vacation and most of it was little trinket type thing that most of you jut pick up here and there as you see them, and think nothing of buying them because they cost 50 cents, but here that fifty cent thing cost five dollars...not kidding. Just to give you a frame of mind, a leatherman micra here costs $48, compare to where you live. So when I was on my shopping vacation, I bought fishing line, a metal pencil sharpener, basic dollar store first aid kits, solar powered lights (for a project I saw on pinterest.com), Mylar survival blankets, sewing kits, fish hooks, balloons (will explain balloons in another future post lol), and other like items that I can't think of because they are so insignificant I should never have had to travel eight hours to buy them lol. The only things of actual significance that I purchased on this trip was a Gerber folding knife ($30 there $79 here) and a Sheffield multi tool ($13 there like tool $58 here). I spent all this time looking in Walmart and dollar stores for things I needed for my EDC kits and BOB but didn't want to shop online fore them. Bigger items like knives and guns and tools etc etc etc can be bought online for a good price and because they are sought after items you can trust that they are what you need via reviews and stars and what not.... Do you ever see reviews on dollar store sewing kits? No you don't. So I spent all my time and most of my money on small little things that anyone would just buy at their local hardware store or at the counter of a convenience store because they are no big deal....impulse buys.
Even though I whine about having to travel to buy this stuff, I am excited that my EDC Kit and BOB are starting to fill out now....which indeed excites me.
Another thing that I had planned on doing when I went out of town, was to take the daughter and go to a shooting range to see how we felt about certain guns. As I have stated before I have zero experience with guns, I have barely even been in a room with someone with a gun lol. So we wanted to go to this indoor range that was near our hotel,but when we got there and phoned them to see about costs and what not (their site only mentioned a $20 drop in fee but nothing about rentals or ammunition costs), and got a message saying they had closed down for the rest of the month for renovations, BALLS! That really sucked, it was by far the part of the vacation I was looking forward to the most....I couldn't wait, was actually getting giddy about the idea of shooting some handguns and finding what type I felt most comfortable about. but hey what are you gonna do right. We have a range in town, I don't know anything about it or what they have to offer, but at some point I will saunter over and check it out (future post guarantee).
So over all, the vacation probably cost us more in travel and lodging than we should have spent in order to spend and buy what we did, but I needed time away from work, and this trip did the trick.
So as far as your "insignificant" item purchases, which was your first nothing item you bought for your prepping endeavor?
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