Notes From The Appalachian Trail Part 1

I Finally did it! After years of hearing about the travels of my brother and his son, I joined them on a quest to complete sections of the AT. Our original goal was up in Maine, but Hurricane Matthew changed our plans and we ended up at Standing Indian Mountain in North Carolina. That was plenty cold enough for me. The 3 1/2 day trip included 37 miles of hiking and 3 nights camping out in the wild. It was full of adventure.

Paul told me that I would hike hard and climb into my tent and sleep like a baby at night. I didn't realize that he meant I would spend all night crying for my mommy about my feet hurting. I think the first decent night's sleep I've had was the night after I got home from the trip. On the other hand, I loved the hiking, the meals, and meeting people on the trail. The main bonus of this trip was after a life of wishing I could hit the mountains when the leaves were changing color in the fall, I finally did it big time.

One of my first major experiences was staying in a shelter on the trail at night. The second night of the trip we shared a shelter with Pat, a very interesting guy that happened to be hiking in a full Scottish uniform, including kilt. I'm slowly finding that just plain hiking isn't good enough anymore. I was told along the way that someone hiked the whole AT last year in a Batman costume...but that could just be a legend.