Updates included below
Tired about the political situation in the country? Tired of your job? The kids getting on your nerves? Can’t stand to watch the news? Ever want to chuck it all away and get out of the rat race? Want to feel good about your life again? Come follow us as we quit our jobs and find ourselves starving in the streets and backwoods around the world–there’s nothing like someone else’s misery to cheer you up.
Imagine sleeping on the ground for 4-5 years with only one night a week in a hotel/hostel/under a picnic table out of the weather. Think of being so removed from civilization that the thought of a porcelain toilet sounds like a luxury. Just imagine that your only responsibility for the day is to walk a bunch of miles and eat (while trying not to kill your spouse who talked you into this).
There will be ups. There will be downs. There will be tears. There will be blood. There will be poisonous snakes (followed again by more tears). There will be bears (tears again). There will be blisters (will he ever stop crying?). There will be leg cramps. There will be mice crawling on your face in the middle of the night. There will be close encounters of the third kind (all good blogs have alien abductions and anal probes).
Come join us on our extended honeymoon and see who makes it out alive. The beneficiary forms have been filled out–let’s hike!
2018 Update:
We did survive nearly 8 months of being together 24/7 (or 3.42857 for the literal engineer reading this). What this means is we have spent nearly 3.5 times with each other than “normal” married couples do. In spite of the overload of togetherness, we are still talking to each other; granted, most of the time it is rather more loudly than most newlyweds talk. But, let’s face it–the honeymoon is over (in the traditional sense, we have been married for over a year now, but we are just getting started with our travels).
Let’s review what we did accomplish in 2017. We successfully hiked the following trails: the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path (186+ miles), El Camino de Santiago (575+ miles), GR10 Pyrenees Traverse (560+ miles), the Tour du Mont Blanc (100 miles), the Dales High Way (over 50 miles before we got too f’n cold and one of us (or maybe both, my memory fails me) to sleep outside and trudge in mud any longer–all together, we got a little more than 1500 miles in. We spent an additional 2 months of sightseeing which reinforces the fact that hiking is easier on the body (and healthier in burning off excess calories–we gained everything back through great beer and solid food).
We hiked in mud, in rain, in sunshine, in anger, in high winds, in rain some more, in each other’s gaseous clouds (let me verify that, yes Virginia, women do fart), in snow, in confusion, and in despair realizing that our partner is human (and has something dead inside of them). Overall, we have to call 2017 a successful experience in that it proved we CAN hike long distances for extended periods of time. It seems likely that we won’t kill each other in the back country, but we do have a concern about our speeds. We feel very confident that we will successfully complete the Appalachian Trail this year, but we have concerns about whether we will be able to complete 3 major trails back-to-back-to-back. We may have to rethink our schedule for this winter and/or next summer.
We hope you will follow along with us as we start out on the AT in early to mid February. We are sure to run into snow and inclement weather. We will try to avoid committing further crimes along the trail (since we will have fewer breakfast buffets along the way, I SHOULD be able to curb my wife’s kleptomania). I think we will follow my dad’s advice and hold hands more this year–it’s harder to strangle your partner if they already have one of your hands in their grip.
2019 Update
By all accounts, 2018 was successful. We lived. We completed the Appalachian Trail in a staggering 252 days setting a new land speed record for snails. We were passed by over 2000 hikers on the trail. We even passed someone in lower Virginia (to be fair, it was an amputee but a pass is a pass).
We did get a quantification for the time we are spending together. For spouses spending 24/7 together, you get a weighted marriage factor of 10. I don’t remember where we heard it, but Bunny heard it as well so I can’t get in trouble when I say the first 2 years of marriage have felt like 20. By now, I’m pretty sure Bunny feels that a scale factor of 10 is not large enough. I continue to work my magic on women—spend lots of time with me to make your life feel much, much longer.
Trail life is even more amazing than I imagined as a weekend warrior. The people you meet are amazing. Suzy, who we met in France on the GR10, who took us into her home overnight was just the tip of the iceberg. So many people hear of what we are doing and they just want to help us out to be a part of it. Now if we could just find a billionaire willing to subsidize our hikes to the meager tune of $1,000/mile, we would never have to stop.
As the end of February is approaching, we are getting ready to head out on the second leg of our Triple Crown—the Pacific Crest Trail. Like Dolf Lundgren’s character in Rocky (3, 4, 27–I’ve lost track which one it was) the PCT has already been telling us “I must break you.” And just like Rocky, I will respond by using my face to absorb the impact. It can only be an improvement.
Come for the trail, stay for the people. There are so many amazingly wonderful people out there that it only makes me shake my head in wonder and think to myself “I’m an asshole.” I wish I had started this experiment in trail life 30 years ago.
2020 update
2019 didn’t go as we planned or hoped it would. We started the PCT too early and had to contend with large amounts of snow. The hope was that since 2017 had been such a high snow year in the Sierra, we were due for a low snow year. Nature doesn’t work that way.
We should have realized that when we started our trek. Or rather, had to delay starting our trek because bus service to Campo was cancelled because of snow…snow on the Mexican border! In the desert! In southern California! The snow pack in the Sierra was only 80% of normal, so we began patting ourselves on our backs for our wisdom in starting early. During the month of March, the Sierra got hit…hard, going from 80% of snowpack to 220% making it the heaviest snow year in the last 40 years.
We skipped around the Sierra, but still had to get off after a near-death snow incident on the back side of Grizzly Peak in Northern California. Rather than fight the snow, we headed to the Oregon Coast to hike the OCT during the month of June.
After our son’s graduation from Army Basic Training, we headed up to the Bridge of the Gods to hike the Washington Section of the PCT fully expecting to return to the Bridge of the Gods to hike south and finish up the trail, fragmented as it was. We got to visit an old friend (emphasis on old) whom we had met on the Camino de Santiago in 2017 and had a mini-Camino reunion with him (Pete), and Cat, who both live in Vancouver.
As we were about to get back on the trail from Portland, OR, I got the call from my dad to head home quickly. My mom had taken a sudden turn for the worse and she might not live another 48 hours. We were able to get on a plane and head home within 4 hours of receiving the call, but it was still too late. My mom passed away while we were in the air on the way to Denver.
I’ve had one of the worst winters of my life dealing with my mom’s death (and all the guilt associated with that–I was raised Catholic), not having a dog, and then all the Covid crap in the spring. Our current plan is to get back on the PCT in late June assuming the trail reopens.