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Blue Cake for Woe (Zoe)
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed by email! Thanks for visiting!Since we missed Zoe’s birthday by a week and her birthday party, too, Chris and I wanted to do something for her. Yesterday I made the cake. I ended up using a simple white cake recipe and made cream cheese frosting (8oz cream cheese, 1/2 stick butter, 4c powdered sugar for one batch, double for more) and made a two layer cake. This is my first time making a cake from scratch. I’m no cake decorator, but I had a lot of fun making it! It turned out very moist, too! I went…
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Trout Lilies in Macro
Some of the other photos I never processed last March were trout lilies that we took at the Heard Museum. On our hike we saw quite a bit of trout lilies in the south. I can’t remember where they stopped growing, maybe Pennsylvania? Anyway, enjoy the photos. I was happy with how some of them turned out, especially the reverse lens macro ones! Yesterday I went for a run with my brother, the first workout post-hike. I kept up and my lungs felt good, but my knees did not enjoy it when I stopped. I was also disappointed to know we only went 2.1 miles. It went fast, but it…
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Zoe back in February/March
While waiting for our connecting flight in Baltimore yesterday I opened my laptop to find unprocessed photos from before we left for the AT. I found all sorts of Zoe photos and so I decided to process some of them and here they are! She is so much bigger now and you can see little parts of her now, but she’s more kid than baby now! This one was kinda out of focus so I ‘rescued’ it by turning it b&w. It was too cute to let it fade away. Mmm, bubbles! This smile is still there. Oh, you should have seen her this morning when she got to see…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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The Song of the Loon
We officially walked to Maine! It was very exciting to see this sign! The book said that the state line was this yellow paint spot but I wasn’t expecting to see a sign since the majority of our previous state lines didn’t have anything. There is a sticker that I see frequently at outfitters, one I will have to get, that says “Yes, I walked here from Georgia”. Yes, folks, I walked here from Georgia. Can you believe that? That saying comes because when you run into someone, usually a person who isn’t familiar with the trail, they are always incredulous that you’ve walked that far. Sometimes I think it…
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The Whites: A Definition
The Whites -noun 1)a mountain range in N New Hampshire, part of the Appalachian Mountains. Highest peak, Mt. Washington, 6293 ft. (1918 m). 2)Ass kicker 3)Vermont + Pennsylvania combined. Mud + rocks. 4)Mileage reducer 5)Beautiful 6)Exhausting 7)Crowded Ahhhh….we’re done with the Whites!!! THANK YOU GOD! Ok…so I’m a touch dramatic, but wow, what a wipe out, tiring experience. After doing Moosilauke (which wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be) and getting slowed down on the north side of Kinsman Notch we had to re-think our mental game in terms of mileage. Goodbye 15+ mile days. We couldn’t even think it. When you look at the book it seems…