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A Year Ago on Springer
A year ago: -We signed our first log book. -We saw our first white blaze. -We froze our butts off in the freezing rain. -We started a crazy, awesome adventure that I won’t forget. Some day I will stop writing about it—maybe—we’ll see about that—but it’s still fresh in my head even if it was a year ago we started.
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Florida Trail Tales 2: Lake Okeechobee to River Ranch
This entry will be less heavy on photos as this is where our SD card went on the fritz. Instead I will try to paint a majestic picture with my words. Or not. I’ll let you decide. After leaving our stealth site at John Stretch Park we ascended the Lake Okeechobee dike. We’d originally planned to go around the east side of the lake even though it is a few miles longer, mostly because it had an extra city or two for food. Yeah, we plan for food. But when Shamrock Steve told us about the dike being closed on that side we altered our plans and went west. This…
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Florida Trail Tales 1: Loop Road to John Stretch Park
So, the Florida Trail….before we started we spent four days in crowded civilization called South Florida. Having exited the state of Florida a year ago to hike the AT it was going to be fun to see some old sights and see friends. Our first stop was to Bass Pro Shop to purchase backpacker meals, fuel and some other essentials as well as to eat at the really yummy Islamorada Fish House for lunch. After lunch we drove an hour south to see our friend Christine who was leisurely working that afternoon. We chatted for a good while about all sorts of things from hiking to local geocaching gossip before…
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The Best Bread Ever.
Before we left on the Florida Trail I found this recipe for no knead bread on Alicia Paulson’s blog. I tried it for the first time the other night and wow, it is awesome! Want bread for dinner? Totally possible. Oh, this stuff is so good! Here’s my take on it tonight: Check the bread at 35 minutes and see if it is still sticky in the middle. If it is, add another 10 minutes. According to Zoe, “This is good bread!”. If a two year old likes it, you’ll like it!
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Wordless Wednesday
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365 Photos: Day 1
Tech info: ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/80sec, 55mm Chris started a bunch of tomato seeds the other day. We worked in the plot, too, planting lots of new seedlings including carrots, okra, dill, basil, parsley and cilantro. Grabbed a few already growing tomatoes to get a head start and put cages over them. Got some fertilizer going on them. Mom’s potatoes are coming up and her onions are thriving. I’ve been weeding out some of the flower beds in the backyard. A few more afternoons and I might have them done. One bed at a time! Anyone else growing anything?
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The Green Tunnel & Assorted Items
Green Tunnel from Kevin Gallagher on Vimeo. It really is like this! It was fun to look back and know exactly where some of these spots were. Ah, such a good trail. I’m getting Springer Fever a bit; it would be fun to watch all the thru-hikers for the year. Speaker was planning on hiking from Springer to Neels Gap in a week or two and see how all the hikers are doing. Ah, to be a fly on the wall of a shelter! Meanwhile I’ve also got Spring Fever. My mom and brother have garden plots in a community garden this year. Chris and I went out and started…
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Home
We are home in Texas. We finished the Florida trail on Thursday around lunch time. It was very anti-climactic. There was no wooden sign, no three hour-4K foot climb, just the last blaze painted on a piece of wood and a three sided display board about the Florida Trail. Nothing to say we were done. We stood at the edge of the parking lot looking for a stray blaze, seeing if perhaps it would take us to the top of the Fort or maybe the water, but when I looked at the little paper on the board that outlined the mileage for the section it stated that mile 0.0 was…