A 'lil HooHaa

Messing with the blogging world since 2005

appalachian trail

On the Appalachian Trail with Amish

Amish on the Appalachian Trail. (Photo courtesy of Emily Harper)

Imagine setting out on a life-changing event basically alone. Sure you’ve made contact with a few people who are also doing the event and there are many more you’ll meet along the journey…

… but you are basically going solo.

Then add to this that you are a young female — 19 years old — and are hiking a nature trail from Georgia to Maine. You’ll be backpacking, camping, meeting all sorts of people and having to fend for yourself.

How many young females do you know who would spend a summer doing all of that? Many might be preparing for college. Working. Or doing whatever else.

Not Emily Harper.

Harper, a groundsman for a tree company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, had no thru-hiking experience. She said the goal was to lose weight.

So what the heck, let’s hike some 2,180 miles.

Harper also got the chance to live a care-free summer. She met people. Lived independently. But it wasn’t all cookies and cake for Harper, who noted the trail is long and can be quite boring.

Again, however, it wasn’t easy.

Harper took 5 1/2 months to complete the trail. She started March 5 and finished August 18.

That’s a long time to be out wandering a trail.

As for doing future long-distance hikes?

“Not anytime soon,” Harper said.

Who can blame her?

But the future of hiking for Harper, known in the hiking circles by her trail name “Amish,” isn’t something that she needs to worry about now. The reality is she did something that many people won’t ever even try, let along complete. Along the way, she met many people, had a ton of new experiences and found out all about hiking and herself.

She didn’t give in. She took the time needed to complete the hike and she finished. That alone is something to be able to be incredibly proud of. But along the way, she made memories that won’t ever leave her. And that, too, is something that makes a trip like this worthwhile.

Being female on the trail

It’s a good bet that if someone quickly thought about hiking a 2,180-plus, they would be a male. That’s because the bulk of the hiking people appear to be male.

Females are out there, too. And the number of female long-distance hikers appears to be growing. Harper is one of those female hikers. Though she started with a group of people, she eventually separated and began hiking solo.

“Hiking alone can be boring,” she said. “Solo can still be hiking with others, just not a solid commitment, which makes it more fun. People always ask ‘are you traveling alone? Isn’t that scary?’ It’s not that bad. Guys are friendly. If there’s a sketchy character, the other hikers are there to help.”

But fear not for the female hiker. Harper said it’s better to be a female on the trail.

After all, if hundreds of guys are hiking the trail and see one another for many miles. Having a female to talk to and get the different perspective is a good thing, usually.

Amish (right) with a fellow hiker. (Photo courtesy of Emily Harper)

“On the trail, it is a whole lot better to be a female,” Harper said. “People are more friendly to females.”

And how?

Well, Harper said, females are more likely to be given rides into town quicker (hitching), get food or be invited into people’s homes.

“It’s a real treat,” she said. “I’ve met guys who would have to wait hours to hitch a ride. I’d take 10 minutes. Because there are so few females on the trail, I was rare, and felt more special.”

She noted that many guys complain, however, about how females look on the trail and that the females like going into towns. Yet, she said, guys don’t seem to have a problem heading into town as well and beer and meat are two of the things they like to delve into when hitting towns. So, it would appear both males and females could have something to complain about with one another.

Hiking her hike

The original goal, she said, was to lose weight. Seems simple enough. But to hike through sometimes rugged terrain, by yourself, on a 2,180-plus mile trail?

It turns out that this trip became more than losing weight.

For starters, she learned a lot about herself.

“I get lonely and very attached to people,” Harper said. “More so than some. I don’t like hiking by myself and I love staying at other people’s homes.

“I am persistent,” she continued. “Don’t judge people. Everyone has something to offer.”

Persistence goes a long way for Harper, who did things here own way it seems. From hiking with different groups to hiking at night, she did her own thing.

But, even those things could give her the chills a little.

“My first time night hiking was kind of scary,” she said. “I was alone by choice. I was trying to catch up to some other hikers but even so, there were other hikers planning to leave an hour or two after me. I was to anxious to go and I couldn’t sleep.

“I jumped when I heard things rustling and freaked out when I saw eyes staring at me,” she continued. “Which, once I got close enough, I saw it was just a deer. A whole herd of deer.”

Those weren’t the only things that could get to Harper’s spirit.

“It can also be a bit nerve-racking when you start to run out of food,” she said. “And it’s plain annoying when you run out of toilet paper.”

Looking back

Harper said she had her highs and lows on the trail. Though mostly a positive experience, some things weren’t perfect.

“I wish I took my time,” she said. “Being that I started out with a group that had 20-mile days normally, it was hard for me to justify being slow. I felt like I could enjoy myself sitting all day in a shelter. Or stopping to talk to people. I did though. I tried.”

She said some of her best times were hiking at night and being able to watch the night turn into day. As for the bad, she said there were times when she would push herself too hard and everything hurt, which made her break down and cry.

There were regrets, too.

One included when she was hiking through the White Mountains in New Hampshire. She said the only places for hikers to stay are huts where hikers can work to stay (instead of paying). Hikers would work and get cold food, having to wait until about 7 p.m. to get fed.

The last hut she stayed at was called Madison Hut. Thru-hikers were given a small room instead of the cafeteria floor. The hut people made sure the hikers were fed well.

“It was, by far, the best treatment of all the huts I stayed at,” Harper said.

But, Harper said she did a lousy job of helping. She ended up leaving and said later other hikers were disappointed in her because of her actions.

Funny times also happened for Harper.

Take a day she had a long day and got to a shelter. There were two guys in there and Harper said she knew right away they weren’t thru-hikers. At that point, they were digging for worms to go fishing.

After not finding any worms, Harper said she suggested slugs as they were everywhere.

Turns out the two guys also didn’t have a hook.

“They seemed undaunted,” Harper said. “The one carved out a hook from wood.”

The two replaced that wood hook with a safety pin that Harper gave them. And, being she was looking for some really good food, she even offered to help the two.

“I can just imagine the fish sizzling,” she said. “So I tell them that I’ll make the fire.”

The two fellas had fishing line and tied it to a hiking pole. They kept losing the slugs as bait and then tried leeches, which didn’t work well. In the end? No fish.

But, better than the food was that this was pure entertainment. Other thru-hikers were entertained and the two guys gave Harper their extra food.

“Which I took, most happily,” she said.

Harper said some of her best days included ones with views — such as being able to see wild ponies on the trails. Some of the worst days included one where she was swarmed by mosquitoes all night as she attempted to sleep and it was too hot to be inside her sleeping bag.

Helping others

Now a veteran of the trail, some people might as Harper for thoughts if they wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail.

Her advice?

Research. Put money toward a backpack, sleeping bag and tent. Don’t have mail drops.

“Be friendly to everyone,” she said. “You don’t know when you might see them again. Be friendly to day hikers. They might give you food and take your trash.”

And now that she’s done the hike, it might be a little easier to prepare for the long commitment it takes to complete it.

“It’s all mental,” she said. “Make sure you have the support of your friends because you’re going to need it.”

Small things that are important include getting pack weight done and knowing why you want to carry each piece of gear.

“You’d don’t want to spend money on things you don’t need and you don’t want to carry something you never use,” she said. “I had a luxury deck of cards, but even that I didn’t hold onto the whole trip.”

Tidbits

Here are some quick-hitting tidbits from Harpers thru-hike.

  • On what she did in the days following her hike: Organized things, met with friends and started cooking, other than boiling water.
  • How many sets of shoes she went through on the trail: Two pairs of trail runners and got a third pair in Hanover, New Hampshire, though she said she did that unwillingly. Her old shoes had no grip and would slip all the time. “It was nice to be sure-footed once more,” she said.
  • Best trail town? Damascus, Virginia. “I hiked my highest mileage (33 miles) into it. I took two days at “the place.” It was such a milestone (that) I was at this town. I knew I had a chance of completing the trail.”
  • Worst trail town?: “Any place I couldn’t find a free place to stay.”
  • Her trail name, “Amish,” comes from being from Lancaster, Pennsylvania where there is a large Amish population. Whenever she told people where she was from, they asked her if she was Amish, so the name was born from that.
  • Would she do the AT again? “Perhaps. I’d want to go with someone nice.”

To read more from Amish, check out her Trail Journal, which she updated throughout her hike.

From her journal, she also had a brief video on YouTube to show her first few months on the trail. This seems like a great way to really be able to keep track of a hike like this. Document it all! Have a look:

Series schedule:

***

Reminder! Contest going on! I am holding a contest this week for an autographed copy of Bill Walker’s book “Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail”. It runs from October16- to 12:01 a.m. Oct. 28. You can see all the details on the contest page. Enter for your chance to win!

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook by clicking the button on the right side of the page!

Thru-hiking through the eyes of others

The Appalachian Trail is a long and winding road.

For those of you who don’t know what the Appalachian Trail is, allow me to give you a quick background.

The trail — officially known as the Appalachian National Scenic Trail — is a marked hiking trail that runs from Georgia to Maine. The starting and ending points depend on where you start (northbound or southbound), but the points are Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine.

The trail is about 2,180 miles long (give or take a few with any trail changes) and it covers 14 states (Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine).

According to Wikipedia, the trail is maintained by some 30 trail clubs and other partnerships. It’s managed by the National Park Service and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, a non-profit organization.

Much of the trail is through the great wilderness of the East Coast, going up and over mountains and through amazing scenery. The trail also goes through towns, follows a few roads and crosses a few rivers.

Though it’s likely the most famous of the long-distance hiking trails in the United States, it is also part of the “Triple Crown” with the Pacific Crest Trail (West Coast) and the Continental Divide Trail (goes from Mexico to Canada through more Midwestern-area states).

Thru-hiking, to many, is a lifestyle. It’s not easy, either. Don’t think of thru-hiking as a walk in the woods. It’s much more than that. Not everyone can hike 2,180 miles. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy estimates that just 1 in every 4 who attempt the AT thru-hike will complete it.

It takes a lot of planning, endurance, patience and time to tackle one of these trails. Someone hiking the AT could take upward of six months to do it.

The speed record for the AT, which was set this year by Jennifer Pharr Davis (trail name: Odyssa) is 46 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes. She beat the previous record of 47 days, 13 hours, 31 minutes, which was set by Andrew Thompson in 2005.

Now, take into account, too, that Pharr Davis was doing a lot of power days in excess of 30, 40 and 50 miles per day. One day, she did 60 miles.

Hiking!

But for us mere mortals, those types of days aren’t the easiest things to accomplish. No, the reality is that many people start out doing 10-mile days (or about) and work their way up. 20-mile days are good, strong days.

The journey is what it’s about to many.

So, in this series, I am going to bring you the tales of four people. Three who have completed the trail and one who had to pull off from the trail.

Each story is different.

Take Bill Walker, a nearly seven-foot tall hiker who has completed the AT, the PCT and the Camino de Santiago in Spain. He’s gone from the crazy world of Wall Street to realizing what life is about and hiking is a major part of it for him.

Take Emily Harper, a 19-year-old from Lancaster, Pa., who hiked the trail solo this past summer. Think of being a young female, alone, on a trail like this. It’s a different perspective to see if from those eyes.

Then there’s Chris Nadeau, who hiked 815 miles of the trail before deciding he had to attend to things going on in his personal life. It’s a different view of the trail from someone who still has plans to thru-hike the AT, but for now is among the 75 percent who start the trail and don’t finish.

You’ll also meet Tyler Bedick, a chemist from Morgantown, WV, who completed the trail this year in 139 days.

Each of these people has a story with their hiking. From personal sacrifice to the difficulties and triumphs on the trail.

Their story will be told as part of this series.

Over the next two weeks, I’ll bring you these stories to the best of my ability. The dates below show the dates each will run.

I hope you enjoy the series and it’s my hope that this won’t be my last in-depth series of stories or journalistic-style posts (I have others in the works).

Enjoy and I welcome any feedback!

The schedule of the series is as follows (links will be provided for the days that have already passed):

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook by clicking the button on the right side of the page!

A hiking contest

In conjunction with an upcoming series of blog posts I have on thru-hiking, I am having another contest.

And the prize in this is a doozy!

It’s an autographed copy of Bill Walker’s book on his thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail.

It’s a great book.

If you enjoy reading a humorous and — at times — serious look at hiking the Appalachian Trail, this is for you. If you like good stories, this is for you. If you like adventures, this is for you.

This book made me laugh many times. And it really gave me a different view of the Appalachian Trail. It showed the human side and, well, it showed me what it’s like for someone who isn’t a “big time” hiker to give a go and finish the Appalachian Trail.

Over the next two weeks, I’ll be running a series of stories about people who have hiked or attempted the trail. In all, there are four stories on the people, one other as a preview and then I’ll wrap it up at the end with the winner of this contest.

That means, this contest will run until 12:01 a.m. Friday, October 28. The winner will be announced Friday, Oct. 28 in a post on this blog.

So what do you have to do?

It’s simple. All the details are below, but the short of it is this — I want a hiking story! (There are several other ways to earn extra entries, but you must do the first one before the others will count!)

So think deep about it. Decide your story. Enter soon!

The series of stories starts tomorrow, too. So check back to see the start and follow the series of stories!

The contest: Hiking stories.

How to win: In the comments section, give me your best hiking story. It doesn’t have to be major hikes. It could be a quarter-mile hike to find a geocache. Or a 25-mile hike to an amazing view. Just try and make it something in nature. Though I’m sure getting nearly attacked by a house cat on your way to the store would be a funny story, it’s not hiking!

The story can be serious or funny. Short or long. Just give us some details!

Other ways to enter: You have to first do the main contest entry. After doing that, you can earn additional entries by doing the following (a person can do each one, but only once each. So you can earn a total of five entries into the contest.):

  • Like A ‘lil HooHaa on Facebook (on the right side of the blog at the top of the page. If you have already liked the blog, let me know and I can give an entry that way, too).
  • Write a post on your blog about this contest (make sure you let me know so I can check it out!)
  • Tweet about this contest by copying and pasting the following (please copy this exactly… it will fit in a tweet):

@softball29 at A ‘lil HooHaa is having contest! Enter at https://hoohaa.com/?p=2491 !  #hiking #contest #skywalker #billwalker #appalachiantrail

What can you win? An autographed copy of Bill Walker’s book, “Close encounters on the Appalachian Trail”!

Who can enter: This contest is open to anyone. (Note, this is a larger package — so if an international person wins and there are any customs, you will be responsible for it. I don’t know if there will be or not. Shipping is on me).

How decided? Random draw.

Entry deadline is 12:01 a.m. (Eastern Standard Time) Friday, October 28. Results will be announced in a blog post here at noon on October 28.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook by clicking the button on the right side of the page!

Book Review: Becoming Odyssa

Becoming Odyssa.

This book transcends just hiking on the Appalachian Trail.

It takes you through a journey of a young woman growing over her time on the trail. It shows different sides of her. Style. Belief. Growth. Fears. Hopes. The whole nine yards.

This isn’t a normal play-by-play book about the Appalachian Trail.

The true different side to this is that this book is written by a woman who was hiking the trail alone. All of the other books I’ve read about the Appalachian Trail are written by men. So this book really gives one a different side of the story, so to speak.

Jennifer Pharr Davis brings a good writing style to the table and knows how to tell a story. She talks about encounters with nature, people, trail towns and more. She gives strong details about her thoughts and interactions with other people. Davis also gives you her beliefs and faiths, which to some might be a little too much, to be fair.

Still, in the end, it’s a good tale of her trip in growth — physically, mentally and spiritually. The book wasn’t perfect — as I’ll share below — but overall it was a solid read and quite enjoyable.

Now for my thoughts…

The good

The big winner in this book is that it comes from the eyes of a different gender. Reality is, a woman hiking 2,200-plus miles solo on a trail with many men would open a lot of eyes. Especially a young female. Men routinely grow their beards and almost become “mountain men” while on this trails, so I’m sure that alone could give a young solo female hiker the chills.

Her fears seem to match many, but put yourself in the shoes of a young female hiker, making a trip like this on her own and detaching herself from what she really knows for the first time.

That’s Odyssa.

Her stories make you smile. They make you cringe. They make you wonder. She finds a wonderful way in weaving it all together to make sure things make sense and flow well.

She also wasn’t afraid to show her flaws. In the book, she’ll readily admit her hike was less than perfect. And for that, she’s to be commended. She had an unorthodox way of competing her thru-hike, but I’ll let you see if for yourself. She also shows the benefits of being a female on the trail (easy hitching into towns, for example), which is a different view from many AT books out there.

The bad

Though I have no issue with the reality of her beliefs, I do think we get a little too much about God in this book. As someone who doesn’t often share his beliefs with people, I sometimes find having to hear about or read about other people’s beliefs overbearing. Still, I didn’t have an issue with it in the short-term. I just thought that she hit upon it a little too much. And she had no problem talking about how she’d share her thoughts and all with others. To me, that was a little too much at times as, in a few places, it seemed to disrupt the flow of things.

This isn’t all bad, however. This helps her be more at free with how insecure she got at times. It helped her along the trail, thus turning it into a positive. I just have to mention these things as for some others, it might be a turnoff when reading. So be prepared.

Remember, too, that most books I read are on the Kindle. This one had several words that should have been capitalized and weren’t; had a few silly grammatical issues and a couple of style issues. Being I didn’t see the printed version, I’m not sure if this is just the one for the Kindle or both. I’ve seen other books that made it to Kindle that had these type of mistakes but didn’t in the print edition.

Overall thoughts

Not too shabby. I really like the different vantage point for the book. It makes me happy to know that some people don’t think of this trails as a way to prove manliness (to be fair, most of the AT books I’ve read are not like this, but some trail journals are). That this book comes from the perspective of a young female is excellent. It shows a different side of the trail. The female side. The side of someone who can’t walk two feet off the trail and relieve themselves next to a tree. It’s a good look at how hard of a trail this is for many people, especially females.

On a side note, Odyssa returned to the AT this year and set the record for the fastest thru-hike, male or female. She completed the trail in 46-plus days. Amazing. She even had a day where she hiked 60 miles. SIXTY miles! Wow.

Rating

I give this a solid 4 out of 5 stars. It was a quick read and I found myself getting through it easily. Her style is good, her stories are engaging and she has a colorful way of telling her tale. Highly recommended, especially if you are a fan of the Appalachian Trail or hiking in general.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook by clicking the button on the right side of the page!

Notes from my noodle: August 22 edition

I like disc golf.

Seriously, it’s a good time and good exercise. Case in point? By my pedometer’s count, I walked 5.1 miles playing 36 holes in a tournament Sunday afternoon. Anyone who thinks that’s not exercise needs to really define the word. It’s said that 30 minutes of walking per day helps your health. I did that and then some.

But this isn’t about the argument of whether or not disc golf constitutes exercise. This is about how a fun game can turn sour in a hurry.

See, when you are in tournaments, you don’t have control over a lot of things — weather, playing partners etc. You have to go with the flow. Still, the hope is to keep the game fun and entertaining. Without those last two pieces, a tournament — and the game — become dragging and not something I want to do.

So this tournament I played in Sunday…

It’s on a course I really like. I’ve shot well here and though I knew I stood no chance of winning my division, I set a goal of not finishing dead last in the division and the tournament. Anything else would be gravy.

The first round I got paired with three people in a different division. That’s fine, but it was tough because they were playing from the blue (longer) tees and I was playing from the white (shorter) tees. That basically meant that no matter how well I shot, I wasn’t going to get to be first on the tee if I got the lowest score because I was on a different tee.

I didn’t have an issue playing with the guys I was paired with. They were all cool to deal with and good players. But, for someone like me, that’s a little intimidating. They know a lot more. They do a lot more. The score a lot better. It’s tough when paired with people like this because newer players (such as myself) can watch and get lost in it all.

And it can’t be any better for those guys as they shoot 15-20 strokes better than me.

The hardest part was when we walked up to the white tees and sometimes they’d continue on before I’d say something. I don’t blame them either — they are playing from those tees, watching their shots, knowing what they have to do etc.

But for me, it made it harder because I didn’t want to slow them down or “hurt” their game. So I rushed at times, got stupid at others. All because I was worried about other things. The reality was that I wasn’t going to place in my division. Those guys could win theirs. It stunk, to be honest. I felt bad and I played worse. (To be fair, the thunderstorm that rolled through and soaked us didn’t help my misery, either).

I shot an 83 on a course that I hadn’t been out of the 70s on in quite a while.

The second round was a different story. I played with people from my division. People playing from the white tees. We played as quick as we could, had fun and all scored near the same. It was enjoyable. We joked, we chatted and didn’t worry. I wasn’t worried about screwing somebody’s game up. I was loose and enjoyed the round.

End result? A 72.

I truly understand that tournaments are hard to organize, run and do. I’ve done them in many sports. I’ve run leagues and tournaments and all sorts of things. So I can empathize. People who didn’t pre-register can also put a wrench in the spokes. And many tournaments I’ve played in do the same thing in the opening round — mix up players in different divisions. But it seems unfair to put a recreational/novice player with those who are really good. At least put two people playing from the whites in with a couple from the blues. That would make it a little less nerve-racking — for both sets of people.

I don’t know if my play had any effect on the three better players. But I know it did on me because of several factors. It wasn’t the company — I enjoyed the three others. In fact, I think a casual round with the three of them would be fun and educational, in regard to disc golfing. But in a tournament? It was tough.

In the end, it was OK. My 11-stroke differential between rounds earned me a $25 gift card to a sports store for best improvement. So add that to the disc I got for playing and two rounds of competition for my $20 fee, and I can’t complain. But, it’s food for thought.

For those of you who might read the blog and are disc golfers — give me your thoughts and experiences in the comments below. I’d love to hear what you think about these things.

***

As you may know, I’m in the midst of a small personal project on the blog with my research of obscure baseball players.

I’ve picked out a half-dozen or so that I am going to start digging into and getting information on. I’m going to head up to Cooperstown and the National Baseball Hall of Fame to visit its library and find what I can on these players.

I’m hoping I can connect some dots as for some of these players, all I have is what I can find on baseball-reference.com. Hopefully, there will be a few things I can add to the numbers from this trip to the Hall.

***

It’s time for me to come up with a better way of storing memory cards after switching them out of my camera.

I went to the county fair Saturday and took a small memory card full of photos, many of which were really cute photos of a friend’s daughter. When I got home and was ready to move them from the card to my external hard drive, I couldn’t find the card.

Panic set in.

I looked through all of my pockets and everything else. The camera bag, my memory card pouch — everything. And nothing found.

I had put the card in my pocket when switching out and I had no idea what happened. My only thought was that I dropped it at the fair (in one of two places) or in the street at my friend’s house when getting in my car.

He went out and checked at his house. Nothing.

I went searching again and found a bag I had in my pocket. The card somehow ended up in there. My panic ended. That made me realize that I need to come up with a memory card holder to be able to switch out when needed. I don’t ever want to go through that again!

Any of you photographers have any suggestions for a good pocket-sized memory card holder?

***

Speaking of disc golf, as I did earlier in this post, I received an interesting package in the mail.

It was my renewal for my PDGA (Professional Disc Golf Association) membership. What’s odd about that is that I didn’t renew because my membership doesn’t end until Dec. 31, 2011. And if I was going to renew, I would do it after Oct. 1, when it would give credit for next year. Even with that, it wouldn’t make sense. I hadn’t planned on renewing until the end of the year, when it needed to be done.

Last year, when I signed up, I did it after Oct. 1, so it was for the end of 2010 and all of 2011. When I did that, I got all of the perks and membership stuff. It also included the 2010 member card, which showed my membership expiring on Dec. 31, 2011.

Then the package came today.

I didn’t know what had happened. So, I called them.

Turns out that when I signed up in October, I got all of the 2010 items and then would eventually get the 2011 items. Apparently today is that eventually. At least it all makes sense now!

***

I have some things in the works for future blog posts. I have e-mailed Bill Walker — Skywalker in hiking circles — and will be talking to him soon for a post or two on the blog about his adventures in thru-hiking. I have already previewed one of his books on the site and will be reading his second one, soon.

That also gave me an idea.

I have followed several people through their trail journals this year in regard to hiking the Appalachian Trail. Some finished, some didn’t. I am going to reach out to several of them in the hopes of interviewing them for a post on the blog. I’d like to get both sides, too, so it shows why some people need to leave the trail, how hard it is to finish it or not etc.

I’m going to try and correlate them so I can do all of them over a two-week period (including the Walker stories), maybe going every other day or so — that way not going too overboard with the hiking stories! But I think in the end, it will show a compelling picture of what people have to go through on the hikes. It’s my hopes that I’ll be able to get a few photos from each, too, to be able to help all of you paint a picture of what they go through when they do hikes like this.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com.