Appalachian Trail 2010
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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The Countdown Begins
Now that it is officially the last week of work, the countdown towards Sunday has begun. On Saturday our POD got delivered. We ended up going with a POD instead of a U-Haul or similar because of the ease of which loading the container seemed to be. The cost was a bit more but we felt like it would be worth it not to have to shuttle everything across states and load and unload it countless times. Now we can load the POD up when we want and take our time throughout the week. It is about 1/4 full at the moment and more work will be done every evening…
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Packing, Packing, Packing
Ok, so there isn’t a ton of packing going on this week, especially since Chris got back on Friday and we are just kinda getting back into the swing of things. Saturday we spent the day in the yard, cleaning it up and getting it ready for the plant sale. It was a big pain but it made the yard look so much better. A big pile formed at the end of the driveway for the trash man (and women if there are any). Sunday we held the plant sale, cloudy as it was. We had our first sale back in November and managed to sell a lot of the…
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Dinner Island Part II: Macro and Sunset
After going through the rest of my photos of Dinner Island I realized I didn’t have enough macro shots to warrant a separate post. Alas, you’ll get a mix of macro and sunset. I love looking at the little details… Lichen holding on… I think this is one of my favorite shots. It can be difficult to get light coming in like this, but I love it! Probably my favorite sunset shot out of the set. I didn’t think this one was going to turn out that great when I looked at it in the camera, but I think I like it! A few things: -Does anyone else have horrible…
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Destination: Katahdin
I could blame Eliana. After all it was practically this time last year when we went to Payne’s Prairie and met up with them after their epic adventure across North America. She gave me a few magazines to read on the way home and one of them was Backpacker. I didn’t read it until a few days later, but inside was an article on the Appalachian Trail. It took all of finishing the article for me to develop a plan. When Chris got home from work I brought up my great idea: Thru-Hiking the Appalachian Trail. He looked at me with a quizzical brow (ok, it was more like, whaatttt?)…