Photography and Long-term Travel

Branches, Capilano Suspension Bridge Park; Vancouver, Canada

The demands and challenges of photography on a long trip are fairly different from a vacation-length trip.  Primarily, the difference is in the volume of pictures, but there are other surprises too.  This is a collection of ideas, tips, and lessons learned while taking pictures for a year on the road.  Some of them may also be helpful for vacations, or even general use as well.

Gear After a Year

After nearly a year of continuous travel, our gear held up very well.  A few things failed and had to be replaced; others were eventually sent home or left behind after they were no longer useful to the remainder of our trip.  The bulk of it stayed with us, and with few exceptions we were happy with what we decided to carry.  We covered our gear in some detail originally; we’ll just mention the exceptions here.  This post is probably of limited interest to people who aren’t planning to travel extensively.  We found a lot of very useful, first-hand information on travel gear when we were planning this trip, and always wanted to return the favor to other travelers.

Shoes: Full Circle

My first shoe picture was August 2012—I didn’t post those pictures, so the first shoe post was a month later, in September.  Now that it's August 2013, I thought I’d post those first pictures alongside the final ones.  If you hover your mouse over each image, it will change to display the shoes as they were a year ago.  If you’re using a touch screen, I’m not aware of a way to display mouse-over/hover effects, but the original images are at the very end of the post.
The Ecco’s are showing quite a bit of wear in that year, but are still holding up well.  They were a great investment for a year of constant travel!  I knew I didn’t want to try to buy replacement shoes outside the US, where finding a size 12 would be a challenge.  They were very flexible; they look decent enough for a nice dinner, with a little brushing up, but they also were very serviceable hiking shoes, even for three days on the Inca Trail, including pouring rain (my feet were drier than the rest of me).  GoreTex is pretty awesome in shoes.

My Tom’s are faring much better than I expected, for a lightweight, cloth shoe.  Definite wear in the heel tread, but the uppers aren’t much different, aside from a bit of fine sand blasting from Egypt and Jordan. 

My trail shoes don’t look too different after a year—more’s the shame.  It’s a bit hard to see through the mud and grass from our last run, but there is some tread wear.  Lana’s running shoes generally look pretty good in the upper when the tread is already shot, so these may be following that model.
If the mouse-over effect doesn’t work for you, here are the shoes in August 2012:
New Ecco:

New Toms:

New Trail shoes:

Shoes: July

The Ecco Trail IV’s were in heavy use in June.  We did a lot of walking on cobblestone streets in Central Europe, and they insulated my feet from the uneven cobbles telegraphing through the soles. They were also extremely useful during torrential rain in Prague, which eventually saturated and penetrated my umbrella, while my toes remained dry and comfortably warm.  However, all that walking, on top of heavy daily use for the past 10 months is finally taking a toll.  The latex outer tread is starting to wear through in one spot, in my right heel, as seen below.  One short seam on the instep of my right shoe has also come loose, but isn’t getting any worse in the past month, so I’m not too concerned.  On a side note, I had no idea Ecco was a Danish company until I saw multiple Ecco stores in each large Danish town we visited.

The Things I Carry

I was packing up the other day when I realized how little of the stuff in my suitcase now were things I started out with.  So I thought I’d go through my bag as I packed things up, and talk about some of the cool things I’ve bought or replaced, and what is standing the test of time.

Gear additions

In a previous post, we talked about how the Nexus 7 has been the only addition to our electronics gear, during our travels.  That’s not quite true, and we have since added once more piece.

Travel Apps and Digital Gear

When we were planning this trip, we looked at a lot of other long-term travellers’ gear posts for ideas.  I didn’t see a lot of info on electronics and apps, however, so I’m hoping this will be useful to other travellers in their planning.

Update: As of February 2013, avoid purchasing apps from Amazon's AppStore.  When you have limited connectivity, the AppStore will regularly de-authorize your purchased apps, making them unusable until you can connect to the internet again.  This is a huge problem if you rely on any of these apps.  Google's Play store handles this differently; in the six months we've been traveling, we've never had a problem with apps purchased from the Play store.  We've lost track of the number of times our Amazon apps stopped working.  Typical errors are similar to "You must be connected to the internet to use this app" and "Unknown AppStore error.  Please download this app again."  More info on this issue here.  We encountered this problem even when we had internet access, but were required to sign in to a web page to get access.  Amazon's AppStore refused to connect on some of these networks, even though we could access the internet with all of our other apps.

For the first two months, the app we used the most was a Spanish-English Dictionary, pictured above (and that was a word I needed to look up, yes).  It was always with me, but not in the form of a heavy, thick book—and occasionally I would make use of the pronunciation feature too, though this would be a lot more useful for a language you were completely new to.  If you’re evaluating translation apps, consider if they work when you have no internet access—this one was completely offline, so it worked in areas two days’ walk from electricity.

Our second most used app is MapsWithMe Pro, which is to paper maps what ebooks are to paper books.  We can carry maps for every country, city, and remote countryside area we’re going to visit, and they’re always in our pocket, on our small Android devices, so we don’t have to remember to bring a map, let alone purchase one.  Not only is it a huge space and money savings, but it gives us detailed info in areas that would be difficult to purchase paper maps for.  Google maps are great—when you have connectivity.  This is entirely offline, and you can choose where to store your maps, which is great if your device has an external memory card option.  There is absolutely no turn-by-turn navigation provided in this—it’s simply a map, though if you have a GPS in your device, it will optionally center the map on your actual location, or swivel the map so that “up” is always the direction you are traveling.  The Pro version of this allows you to search by street, address, point of interest (gas, grocery, hospital), or coordinates; search has been very useful.  The Pro version also allows you to place pins on the map, with names, details, and colors.  We've gotten in the habit of dropping a pin where our hotel is, making it easy to orient ourselves at a glance.  We have used this in every city we’ve been in at some point, as we wandered around.  Often we knew where we wanted to go, we just didn’t know what street we were currently on, or simply which direction we were going.  In South America, the street signs were highly variable, so you could walk a long distance before finding a sign that confirmed whether you guessed right or wrong.  Since we are no longer using the Spanish-English dictionary, this will probably become our number one app soon. Update: This is definitely our most used app now, bar none.

When we are driving, since the otherwise excellent MapsWithMe does not have navigation, we use the free (currently—after it leaves beta, who knows) Navigator app, which again, allows you to download maps for later offline use.  It’s great for high-level directions, but like any GPS navigation, it’s best paired with a competent human navigator.  Fortunately, we have at least one of those (there is debate about a second—that would be David).  We’ve named the AI speaker “Maude” as she sounds like a surly British teen, and tends to give you critical directions just after you wonder aloud why she hasn’t told you left or right already.  When you’re navigating intersections with no street signs, it’s easy to put up with her sometimes eccentric route choices.  The travel time estimates have been pretty accurate, and that’s very useful, even just for planning.  All of that said, the map data is not as accurate as MapsWithMe, and the interface is a little clumsy, so we’ve never used it while walking, even though it has a specific pedestrian mode. And regularly, we actually just use MapsWithMe while driving, since it's a lot more stable, and we just use it like a paper map, typically with Lana giving David her own turn-by-turn voice directions.

Unit Converter has been a great tool.  Not only for converting the distance, length, and temperature units used everywhere else in the world, but for currency conversions, which we use more often, especially as we’ve developed a feel for metric and Centigrade. 

Some of the more standard apps have been very useful for travel too.  Obviously eBook readers, like Kindle, Moon Reader (which can open many non-proprietary formats, like EPUB) allow us to bring as many books as we wish, without taking any physical space.  This has been very handy for travel guides, as well.  We are also able to bring our entire music library with us (thanks to a 64GB microSD card in the Samsung Galaxy Player), which is great for flights, road trips, and evenings at wherever we stay.

We’ve been ‘packing’ the complete Lord of the Rings trilogy (all 1138 pages of it) with us, and the complete works of Agatha Christie, among others:

Some of Google’s standard mobile apps have also been great: The GMail app caches received mail for offline access, so we can pull up details from accommodation we’ve booked online.  Similarly, Google Drive allows you to pick files which you want to access offline, such as the color copy of our passports, our entire trip itinerary, etc.  We’ve also used Evernote for storing some trip info, or just for jotting down tips from other travelers, for future reference.

When we’re planning activities or photography, and want to know when sunrise or sunset will be, without needing internet access, Sunrise Calculator gives us what we need.  Simply turn on the GPS, and it will update the times based on your current location, as well as  telling you exactly where in the sky the sun will be.  For photography, I’ve been using Moon Phase Pro to find moon phase and rise/set times.

MoonPhase Pro:

For more mundane matters, David was able to configure his mother's multi-function printer to scan directly to a Dropbox folder, which was then shared so that either of us can view the contents from our Androids or the laptop.  That way, and important mail (like those upcoming tax documents) can simply be scanned and we can read and deal with it from the road.  Also, our debit card bank allows us to use an app to take a picture of checks to make deposits, which we can use to transfer additional funds in, without leaving a large amount there in case of a stolen ATM card. 

For travel info, both the TripAdvisor and Triposo guides have been useful, though they are not a replacement for a complete guide for more in depth treatment of an area we’d spend more than a day or two in.

After some debate, we did retire one piece of electronics--our classic ‘keyboard’ Kindle reader.  We’ve mentioned our computer bottleneck in previous posts, and our solution to that was to get a Nexus 7 tablet as a sort of Christmas present to each other (and to our marriage).  We also got this Bluetooth keyboard, and a USB OTG cable, which allows our light, travel mouse to connect to the Nexus, so it can act as a very lightweight portable computer with a tactile keyboard and two button mouse.  Now one of us can work on correspondence with a keyboard, or booking/research with a mouse while the other is working on pictures on the actual laptop.  Since Lana was carrying the Kindle Fire in her gear previously, and the Nexus replaced it, it tricked down to David, and replaced the Kindle classic as his reader.

“You sunk my battleship!”

David, after some Googling, found a way to configure the laptop as a WiFi hotspot, allowing all of our devices to connect through one Internet connection.  This is necessary for a lot of Internet access in New Zealand, as it is controlled by a single-user login, which does not allow subsequent logins from other devices until the first has logged out.  When we bought a phone SIM at the Auckland airport, we also picked up a tiny USB GSM modem, for use in areas without WiFi, or where the pricing is ridiculous, and the laptop can share that Internet access to all our devices too.  After rooting the Nexus 7, we can also connect that USB modem to the Nexus 7 directly, through the USB OTG cable, and using the PPP Widget app, connect to the Internet anywhere there is a 3G signal.  It could come in handy for some unexpected internet use on the road.

An interesting side note on Internet access:
On our road trip in the US, WiFi was spotty, but when available, was generally free.  In South America, it was available everywhere there was electricity, and almost always free (and almost always pronounced wee-fee, in case you need to ask for it).  In New Zealand, WiFi is not quite as spotty as it is in the US, but it’s almost never free, and frequently it’s quite expensive, although some central business districts have free WiFi access.

At the end of 2012, we had the opportunity to refresh our gear; ship worn stuff home, replace it with new, or simply offload things we weren’t using. To some, we probably have a dizzying array of electronics weighing us down; I’m sure there are others who think we’re on the minimalist side too.  Everyone travels differently.  But when we had the chance to offload, we didn’t (we’re counting the Kindle classic as ‘replaced’), and that’s because the electronics we did take ended up being very useful, and not the mental burden we feared they might be.

Shoes - January

My shoes have made it 4 months, and many miles.  The Ecco’s brushed up nicely after their abuse on the glaciers, but they do have a few deep scratches that are there for good, now.  There doesn’t appear to be a lot more wear on the tread than last month.

I’ve put some more miles on my running shoes finally, but they’re still nearly new.   We’re finding it a lot easier to pick safe and pleasant places to run in New Zealand, weather willing.

And the Tom’s are holding up better than I expected, given how much I’ve been wearing them.  We’ve seen very few people in NZ with them (or similar), and have never seen anything like them in the many, many shoe stores we’ve walked past.

I'm still quite pleased with all three shoes--no regrets about any of them, or with lugging them halfway around the world.

Lana’s Gear

I’m a little late to the gear party, but I’m finally buckling down and putting together a post of what I’m taking with me.  Brace yourself, this one is going to be a little lengthy. As David said in his post, when we were daydreaming about this trip for months, we read a lot of blogs that had posts about what people took:  their bags, their clothes, their electronics, etc. For some reason those posts are very popular. But they got me through the planning phase, and I took a lot of tips from various bloggers, so I thought I’d throw in my own two cents. We will probably make some changes down the road (this road trip portion of the journey is a perfect time to do that). I’ve already discovered one of my shirts is totally see-through, which prompted a quick trip to Target this morning. When you only have six shirts, and one is essentially sheer, you’ve got to do something about it, and quick.
So here we go. In looking at this picture I’m realizing I have a lot of black items with me, which is good because it goes with everything and generally hides dirt, but bad because we’re traveling through a perpetual summer as we drift from the southern to northern hemisphere. Imma gonna cook. So that, coupled with the see-through shirt, may have this looking a bit different by the time we take off for Ecuador in October, but here’s what I’ve got right now.
 
Starting from top left and going clockwise, spiraling to the center of the photo:
I’ve got a couple of packing cubes from Eagle Creek; the smallest one is filled with knickers (6 pairs);
The largest one is filled with my running kit: 2 pairs running shorts, 1 short sleeve shirt, 1 tank top, 2 running bras, 3 pairs of socks, headphones, RoadID, sunglasses, and running hat, GPS watch (unpictures because I forgot it at home) and charger;
Bottoms in 3 lengths:  1 pair shorts, 1 pair capris, 1 pair long pants that roll up;
A little black dress, a black skirt that can be longer (below knee) or shorter (above knee) if you roll the waistband over, and even a short swim cover-up that ties around your neck. It’s from Patagonia.
A little black cardigan.
Travel towel in pouch.
Cotton hoodie.
3 bras (one black, one white, one nude)
The medium packing cube on the left is filled with shirts (4 short sleeve and 2 now 3 tank tops—that purple striped one is the one you can see straight through. Fun for the whole family!). I have found the Gap Body line of shirts to be easy to wash and quick to dry, and I’ve got a couple of other Old Navy shirts that have a little stretch. Cotton shirts don’t dry as well and they don’t re-shape as well as some with a little lycra
Two long and narrow packing cubes, the one on the left including swimsuits (2), pareo, large brimmed hat (I love the Wallaroo ones made in Boulder), and the one on the right including cold/wet weather gear, including a North Face rain jacket, Lululemon leggings, a pair of lightweight gloves, and a long sleeved hooded running tech tee from REI, good for running in cold weather, or as an additional layer
And in the center, a pair of capri sweats from C9 Target and a racerback Nike tanktop to use as pajama/cover-up when tramping to and from the bathroom in campgrounds and hostels where we have to share a shower. See regular sleepwear below
Cheap Kenneth Cole Reaction sunglasses (unpictured)
Next, the shoes. Starting from the top left and going clockwise:

Running shoes: for our road trip portion, I just bought my regular running shoes (Mizuno Wave Inspire 8), but I’ve got a pair of Salomon trail running shoes that I’ll be taking on the around the world portion.
Toms (love my Toms—they’re so comfy. I’m using my current gray pair on the road trip, but I’m saving a red pair for the RTW leg.)
Keens for hiking, water shoes, etc.
Pair of cheap highly squishable black flats
Flip-flops for showers, hostels, and beaches
I realize this is 2-3 more pairs of shoes than most people take, and I may get rid of the black flats, but they pack so flat it doesn’t make much difference to throw them in.
Next up, toiletries, again clockwise:

Babyliss travel blowdryer. In my normal travels, I often don’t bring a blowdryer because most hotels have them. This one is teeny tiny but it works really well.  And I defy you to find a campground with a blow dryer.
Tom’s toothpaste (using up the big tube)
Folding toothbrush
Brush (this one is huge, but I haven’t found a good small brush)
Suave dry shampoo
Bumble & bumble shampoo and conditioner
Face wipes
Makeup—tinted moisturizer, eyeliner, lipgloss, lip balm
Sunscreens—50 spf, 100 spf, 30 spf for my face
antiobiotic cream, razors, deodorant and soap
Bumble & bumble thickening spray, gel, comb
Two large hair clips, hairbands and bobby pins (in the small tin)
Clippers, tweezers, nail file
Unpictured:  separate kit of medications (benadryl, sudafed, immodium, petpo, maloxx, bandaids), aloe vera gel, bug wipes, sunscreen wipes (we’re big on sunscreen in the Bump household).
All of this fits in my Jansport toiletry kit, which I absolutely love and have had since about 2005. I weep for the day it fails, but for now I always use it when I travel. I’ve tried other similar toiletry kits, but none come close. I can hang it anywhere, there is a separate zipper pocket, a middle mesh pocked and a small top pocket that holds the hook and is great for small things that always fall to the bottom, like hair ties and your toothbrush.
Simple sleep kit:

Coolmax sleep sheet that zips together with David’s made by his seamstress genius of a mother (thanks Jean!)
Pillowcase made from the same material. The pillow will stay behind on the RTW portion, but we’ll stuff the pillowcase with clothes to use as a pillowcase if necessary.
Tank and boxers
And finally (and again clockwise), my gear. Although some of this stuff is really David’s gear, but I’ll be carrying it in my backpack per his backup strategy post. Have you read that one yet? And you’re still awake? I kid, but I’m grateful he thinks about this stuff so I don’t have to.

Secondary backup hard drive and SATA-USB adapter,
Outlet expander with 2 USB ports and 3 plugs
Network cable
Micro USB charger
Camera battery charger
Retractable auxiliary input cable
Lenovo laptop and power supply
Canon 310HS camera
Crappy LG cellphone
Samsung portable media player
Bubi bottle (see David’s post for what it looks like squished down and rolled up)
Headphones
Travel journal and pen
Petzl headlamp
Micro USB charger (yes, another one—one in each bag. Almost everything charges on micro.)
Kindle fire for games, books, magazines, internet backup, etc.
Our bags:
David’s already linked to these in his post, but we each have an eBags weekender bag (mine is the blue one you can see the top of below), which has lots of handles, backpack straps and a shoulder strap to boot. We’ve traveled with them a couple of times and they easily fit in the overhead space on flights. We also each have an Osprey Quasar backpack(the green one at the edge of the shot), which is sturdy but has lots of pockets and a chest and waist strap. I like the cinches on each side which cinch the sides down nicely. I currently have a lot of stuff in my eBag, and my backpack is actually kind of empty, aside from the laptop and my camera. I also picked up an inexpensive canvas/cotton messenger bag style purse at Target, which packs down to nothing but is a lot less conspicuous in cities rather than traipsing around with a backpack. It slings across my waist or can be cinched up under my arm like a regular purse, and it’s got good pockets for stashing various items.

And that’s it. It’s a lot of stuff, and it’s very heavy, so it’ll be interesting to see what we jettison by the time we leave for Ecuador in October. Right now since we’ve got lots of cargo space, it’s easy to just throw a couple of extra things in. But that’ll change.  I know we’ll let stuff go as we travel. So far the only thing I’ve added is a black tank top to camouflage the see-through one.  I know how disappointed you all are.
So I’m curious. You’ve seen and heard what we’re bringing—are we crazy? Is there anything we forgot that we should bring? Or what would you say to donate to the nearest Goodwill and godspeed?  Let us know!

The Rest of David’s Gear

While planning what to take on our trip, I read a lot of gear posts from other travelers.  Some photographer-specific articles gloss over the soft-goods like clothes, but given the volume and weight of the photo gear they describe, I wonder if they’re taking anything but the clothes on their back and possibly a change of underwear that doubles as padding around a particularly expensive lens.  Lana and I settled on six changes of clothes to give us some flexibility on where laundry day falls, depending on either timing or facilities (mostly a good location or weather for drying, as we can hand wash nearly anywhere).  I picked clothes that were quick-drying and light weight/small volume foremost, but also durable, since I’d like them to last a year if possible, and buying 36” inseam pants is tricky in some parts of the world.
I already listed my photo/electronics gear previously, which is all stored in my black Osprey Quasar 30L backpack; all of the gear below fits in my carry-on, a red eBags Mother Lode TLS Weekender.

From middle left, clockwise:

• 2 pair pants (navy and tan; REI)
• 2 pair shorts (synthetic blend, tan—one not pictured, being worn) with custom hidden pockets sewn in by my very generous mother with some assistance by me, on the easier, hand-sewn portions
• 1 pair light running shorts (navy)
• 6 pair ExOfficio briefs
• 6 pair socks (RoadRunner DryMax)
• 6 shirts; 4 short sleeve and 2 long.  All synthetic blends (one being worn; mix of REI, Eddie Bauer, and Columbia)
• 2 tech t-shirts for running or for layering (grey & white, on top of shirts above)
• 1 sleep sack, made by my mother out of CoolMax; it zips to Lana’s to form a double when needed/possible
• 1 pillow case, ditto.  Not pictured; for the road trip, it is also filled with a down pillow
• 1 pair boxers on top of the sleep sack
• 1 mostly crushable, and very breathable sun hat (Henshel Breezer)
• 1 light-weight zippered cardigan fleece (black, below hat)
• 1 pair swim trunks (blue, on fleece)
• 1 rash guard for sun protection while snorkeling, or layering (grey, on top of trunks)
• 1 pair light-weight tights for cold weather (black, in same stack above)
• 1 microfiber towel (top right)
• 1 rain jacket (grey, in stuff sack; Sierra Designs)
• Travel first-aid kit
• Sunglasses
• Travel Braun electric razor (2 AA, so no bulky recharger to pack)
• Bubi flexible silicone water bottle (blue, with silver carabineer)
• Toiletries in quart zipper bag (folding toothbrush, deodorant, soap, shampoo, short comb, chapstick, acid-reducer pills and anti-histamines)
• Toothpaste (using up the > 3 oz. tube on the road trip)
• Travel clothes line (braided elastic)
• Ecco Trail IV low leather and Gore Tex breathable/waterproof shoes
• Nike trail shoes, the bulkiest concession I’ve made; I am replacing my daily 8 mile ride with a 3-4 mile run with Lana each morning
• Bill-capped running hat
• Flip-flops (beaches, public showers)
• Tom’s Cordones, for a flat-packing, lighter/cooler shoe option

David's Gear

Aside from clothes and medication, this is the gear I'm planning to take on our travels.  While it looks large when spread out, it all fits in my backpack (the toiletries, journals, Kindle, and backup drives will be in my carry-on sized bag, along with clothes).

Starting in the center, and roughly spiraling out:
Canon 7D

EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS USM

EF 70-200 f/4 L IS USM

67mm hoya multicoated filter on 70-200 for weather resistance

EF 50mm f/1.4 USM

EF 1.4x II Extender

Body/lens cap pair

Four 16GB CF cards

Ultra-light gloves

77mm circular polarizer

Two spare batteries

Battery charger

Rocket blower bulb for dust mitigation

Disposable rain sleeve for 7D & lens

Neoprene sleeves for lenses

Crumpler Haven (nearly all of the above fits in that, which in turn rests in the bottom of my backpack)

Zip-ties and gaffer's tape--my equivalent of bailing wire and duct tape

Above the 7D:

Canon G12

3 16GB SD cards

1 spare battery

Waterproof housing (for some portions of the trip only)

Mini tripod

Lightweight monopod

Photo processing and backup:

Lenovo x220 laptop (secondary photo backups)

Silicon Power A80 1TB USB 3.0 drive (primary photo storage)

Western Digital 1TB USB 2.0 drive (primary photo backups)

Multiple 2.5" SATA drives (incremental tertiary photo backups, to be shipped home)

Mukii ZIO impact/water resistant cases for 2.5" drives

Mukii ZIO SATA to USB 3.0 cable for SATA drive backups

Mukii ZIO SATA to USB 2.0 cable (spare/redundant)

Kingston USB card reader for photo import

Spare/redundant USB card reader (not pictured)

USB mini cable for direct camera photo import (in case both card readers are lost/broken)

16GB USB flash drive for generic storage (not pictured)

USB flash drive configured with bootable UBCD recovery tools (not pictured)

SD card that doubles as a USB flash drive, configured as bootable Ubuntu 12 in case of drive failure or paranoia attack

2.5" 9mm SATA drive (clone of boot drive in Lenovo, in case of drive failure)

Reading, writing, and other:

Journals

Kindle keyboard

Samsung Galaxy Player 4.0 (not pictured)

Multiple USB Micro chargers

Steripen (USB-rechargable UV water sterilization)

Black Diamond Spot headlamp

Headphones, stereo splitter and extension cables

Passport, immunization records, and decoy wallet (small bills, expired credit cards)

Toiletries:

Folding toothbrush

Small comb

Portable electric razor

Toothpaste

Tissue

Toilet paper (sans cardboard tube)

Soap and shampoo

Cotton swabs

Ear plugs

The clothing list will be determined by some trial and error on our road trip.

The backups and redundancies are probably overkill, but I'm professionally responsible (for one more day) for backups, and I know how terrible it is to have a backup failure, and also how to reduce the chances of having one, so I'm going with the overkill option, rather than underkill.

We've been living by lists for the last two weeks as we've been moving out and preparing our house for a renter, as well as planning the trip, and this list was easy--just copied from one of our existing lists.  I'm looking forward to some listless weeks ahead.