• Appalachian Trail 2010

    Preparing Maildrops

    Well, one thing we learned with mail drops is that lunches are the hardest part of the planning process. And we bought slightly too much food. For Christmas we received money to go towards buying dehydrated food for our mail drops. Chris went online and scoped out deals and found a lot of food for good prices from a variety of vendors like Mountain House and Backpackers Pantry. We put them all in a box and brought them home. For breakfast and lunches we hit Sam’s Club, Walmart, Whole Foods and Tom Thumb to pick up all the things that we thought we’d want. I am pickier about lunch than…

  • Friends,  Texas

    Snow Day

    It feels like forever since I’ve written here. I better get used to it—you too—because after looking at our proposed stops it appears I might only be on once a week or even a bit longer than that. After leaving the Dallas side of the family on Tuesday morning we drove to East Texas, near Tyler, to see one of my bff’s Michelle at her house. We left early in order to beat the snow that was moving from the west across the DFW metroplex. We made it to Terrell, just east of Dallas on I-30, when the snow started. It snowed the entire day and melted as it hit…

  • Appalachian Trail 2010,  Texas,  Thoughts

    Trail Thoughts

    As we wind down our first week here in Texas, time is inching closer to when we leave for Georgia for the Trail. We’ve tentatively set the date for starting for the weekend of the 13th of March. With all of the snow that has fallen this month and in January, it appears the trail conditions are fairly bad, especially in the higher elevations of North Carolina and up the trail. We experienced the blow-downs here and there are a lot of them on the AT in GA and NC right now, though local trail associations are clearing them out as they can. I think we’ve convinced my uncle and…

  • Appalachian Trail 2010,  Thoughts

    Trail Q&A

    Alright, I’m finally getting around to the couple of questions that were asked a few posts ago. I know the videos probably cover a lot of the answers, but I will take a few minutes to answer the questions now that we are semi-settled in again. Chris Hind asked: I’d like to know what backpacks and tents you guys will be using. We are using Osprey Atmos 65 packs. Mine is the small version, Chris is using a large. I got my backpack from my dad who got it off of Steep and Cheap and it wasn’t what he was thinking it would be so he gave it to me.…

  • Appalachian Trail 2010

    AT Gear Videos

    Instead of listing everything out, which I know we’ll do eventually on our Trailjournal page, we did a video the other night in order to take account of everything we had. I know a few things got left out like our hats and mp3 players, but here they are. Off for a hike to Grapevine Lake…

  • Family

    Big Sis—Little Sis

    After a few days, Zoe has finally started to warm up to me and Chris. She’s in love with Samson. She also loves Leo, but Leo has whacked her a couple of times and though his claws are trimmed, it scares her, yet she still keeps loving him and trying to get close. We finally let the dogs start getting closer to the cats. We thought it would be more of a cat fight in the house with the other two cats already living here, but it appears it was the dogs that were the problem. Samson wandered the whole house today and Leo came out if the dogs were…

  • Appalachian Trail 2010,  Texas,  Thoughts

    Le Sigh

    We finally made it to DFW today around 5pm. The perfect time for traffic. We had smooth sailing the entire trip until we hit Dallas rush hour and then a few key places near my parents house in Tarrant county. I have to be honest, it was hard to leave Florida. When we passed Pensacola and into Alabama I felt very sad. Through Alabama and Mississippi, where we stayed last night, I felt lost. It subsided a little once we entered the western part of Louisiana and then, finally, east Texas. But, it feels weird being back home. It’s home, but not home. A limbo state. And there is snow…

  • Appalachian Trail 2010

    Almost the Last Day

    If you are new here to my little blog, you can subscribe here and use a blog reader if that is your inclination or click the link that says to get the feed delivered by email. Then, you can follow along on our little adventure and listen to any nonsensical ramblings that I come up with…which is fairly often. So, last night Chris summed it up pretty simply while talking to his mom on the phone. We’re unemployed and almost homeless. I’ll add on to that: We’re unemployed, almost homeless, practically without health insurance and all by choice. Yesterday was our last day of work. I actually did some work…