• Travel & Places

    On the Coast—Maine

    Now that we’ve moved from the mountains to the coast I’ve started getting my fill of sea life again. Oh, how I missed it. While I loved the smell of Christmas and I really miss hearing all of the birds in the forest, I was craving some rotting seaweed and salt. During the last week of the hike I realized that we could go on a whale tour and it didn’t take much to convince my mom to go on a whale tour. The only whales I’ve ever seen were pilot whales off the South American coast in the Pacific, but I’ve always been stuck with the golden retrievers of…

  • Appalachian Trail 2010,  Food

    The Hiker Diet

    Trail Magic at Katahdin Iron Works Road, 100 Mile Wilderness, Maine Now that we are several days post hike we’ve had to really think about what we are eating. When you aren’t burning 5,000 calories a day it is impossible to continue eating like you were. Or, you could, but you’d balloon up in no time! So, I thought I’d give a run down of what a typical thru-hiker eats. Breakfast: Pretty much everyone starts off with oatmeal. It’s warm and easy to make, but it takes time to boil water. In the beginning this is great because you start off later in the morning. Eventually you move on to…

  • Thoughts

    Four Goals and Overwhelmed

    So, it’s been two days since we went up Katahdin and ended the hike. Yesterday felt pretty ok, like a zero day, just relaxing in town. Today, well, it was back to the real world in a way. We’re still on a vacation of sorts, but we went into the biggest town we’d been in since our short trip back to DFW in May and it was a bit overwhelming. So much stuff….everywhere! Our goal of the morning was to hit up a Goodwill after going to Best Buy to get a new GPS since we think ours was stolen from my mom’s luggage in the airport. Goodwill was nice…

  • Appalachian Trail 2010

    The Greatest Mountain

    The alarm went off. Was the sky clear? Yes, the stars were out. We reached over and twisted our NeoAir tubes to deflate them, stretching in our sleeping bags and yawning. It was too early. After fumbling for our headlamps we started moving about, getting dressed, rolling up the air mattresses and stuffing our bags into their compression sacks. Sitting on the side of the tent platform at The Birches, Blue Rooster came by and said he was getting ready. Cubbie & Dilly Dally were in the other shelter getting their items together. We ate a few granola bars for the early morning breakfast and quickly put everything together in…

  • Appalachian Trail 2010

    Almost There.

    Since last leaving y’all we were in Rangeley, Maine. Now we have advanced forward to Monson, Maine, our last town stop on the entire trail. Everyone seems to be a little bit sad about this last town stop, reminiscing in the log books. It does seem surreal that we won’t be continuing our walk north towards a far off destination. We left Rangeley and got to the first shelter two miles out for lunch to find that our friends Moose & Tetherball had finally caught up to us and passed us. Drat! Merf’s friend Inferno had done the same. We climbed up Saddleback mountain and had a beautiful view. Supposedly…