We’re in Amicalola Falls right now after a mostly uneventful 2 day drive down to Georgia. We saw a pickup truck completely engulfed in flames on Monday on 81 N (people all appeared to be safe). I suppose that is the danger of eating Taco Bell for both breakfast and lunch. Anyway, the weather is windy and cold, but looks great to start hiking tomorrow morning.
Vital stats:
Mood – super excited
Smell – so fresh and so clean
Song stuck in my head – Fitz and the Tantrums – Out of my league
It’s almost go-time. We finished up our last training hike today (~10.25 miles with full pack weight at Port Clinton going southbound). The first mail drop was shipped to Georgia yesterday. Monday morning we’re driving down to near Blacksburg, Virginia, then Tuesday it’s on to Amicalola Falls State Park in Georgia, where the southern terminus of the trail is on Springer Mountain. Wednesday morning it’s officially on. Can’t wait to get started!
Here’s what we use to sanitize our water out on the trail. It uses UV to kill potential nasty junk in the water. I’ve been tempted to switch over to a Sawyer mini-squeeze filter, but this guy has done the trick in the past, so we’re going to start with it at least.
Doing this thru-hike is a largely self-indulgent adventure (but hopefully inspiring!). In the spirit of giving something back, we decided to use our adventure and this blog as an opportunity to try to raise a little money to help fight cancer. We’ve lost close friends and family (notably Rose, Georgia, and Tim) to this disease. We set $2185 as the goal to match up with the amount of miles on the AT this year. Here’s the gofundme website:
http://www.gofundme.com/7g9mqc
Note: gofundme does take a small cut but other than that 100% of anything you can give is going to the American Cancer Society.
Here’s our luxurious cooking stove, the Brasslite Turbo II-D
The battery is only there to provide perspective on how tiny this sucka is.
Here are the packs we are taking.
Gossamear Gear G4.
It’s a frameless pack that gets some shape from the sleeping pad jammed in the back. It tops out at around 30-35lbs of packweight, which is perfect for lightweight backpacking.
It is officially our last day of work! (Technically, I will go back in November, but right now it is the last day for a good long time.) And, wow. . . .what a feeling! It is very sad to say goodbye to everyone for the short-term. My job has been like a second home/second family for almost 11 years. It is an odd mix of sadness, guilt (for leaving) and excitement for what lies ahead. I didn’t get razzed like Joel, but they do have a sweet map of the AT hung in our office to follow my every move!
I think it will be a struggle (at least until we start hiking) to get used to not having a routine. Employment has a way of necessitating routine. And, I love me some routine!
I guess though that we will be very busy with all of the dehydrating and training hikes that Joel has planned,
It’s my last day at Lutron, so some much deserved razzing is occurring…
This good stuff is courtesy of Ben Bard (from some Holler in West Virginia)