Food, gear, mail drops, and Amazon Prime

[Fireonwindcsr]

I've been an Amazon Prime member for over 3 years. One of the benefits is FREE SHIPPING. so kill two birds with one stone. Join Amazon Prime, go into the site and add your potential mail drop items to your cart and save. Shipping can take 2-3 days so as you're approaching the potential Mail drop - make your purchase. Be sure of the delivery address for sure. This way you don't have to carry a lot of food and you don't get gouged in "over priced" towns. Just my two cents. Sounded like a plan.

[Starchild]

Yes there are few gouging prices along the AT but really not that many, and mail drops at these few locations can help (Fontana Dam for one, that is also a longer resupply to get thru the Smokies).

However ordering food online and setting up the delivery drops on trail is a bit of a hassle, it was a hassle for me getting shipping locations for people to send care packages on trail and I didn't even have to specify what to get. I found getting the packages like a child opening a Christmas present and was wonderful (as these were gifts to me, not things I ordered), but it really felt like frustrating work getting and timing the maildrop. YMMV



Just my $0.02, and good luck with the plan.

[Dochartaigh]

Just a note on Amazon Prime: if you want them to actually stick to the "guaranteed" 2-day free delivery schedule, make sure the item is "fulfilled by Amazon". Otherwise, it'll get a 2-day shipping method for sure, but the little private shop that sends it out commonly likes to take a day, or two, or three, to actually package it up and drop it in the mail.

Otherwise, when something is fulfilled by Amazon (i.e. it's in their huge warehouse ready to drop in the mail within a couple hours), I've had 1 single package not arrive on time with them, out of literally 60+ orders I've placed. YMMV as I live in a greater metropolitan area - things might very well be different in more rural areas along the AT.