When we tell people we are hiking the Appalachian Trail, it has been fun hearing the first few questions people ask:
- Who is taking care of the cat?
- What are you going to do with your stuff?
- Where are you going to sleep?
- What are you going to eat?
- Are you taking a gun?
- What is your spouse going to do? What?!?! And they're ok with doing that?? (usually this person only knows one of us. People that know both of us already know we are both half-crazy, adventurous people)
The hardest question to answer though is: "why/how did you come up with the idea?"
In short, there is no one answer.
Pacific Crest
When we lived in the People's Republic of California, we were exposed to camping and hiking opportunities along the backwoods trails and the fire roads in the Sierra Nevadas and Lake Tahoe regions. We were vaguely aware of the Pacific Crest Trail, and mentioned how cool it would be to hike it someday.College Alumni
Last year in the spring, we received a college alumni magazine in the mail. There was a small article about an alumni that had hiked the trail in 2011. We contacted him on Facebook and asked him some of the basic questions people ask us now. Not only was he was super nice with his reply, but very encouraging and candid in his answers.Loner
Surfing the internet, we found numerous blogs and videos of hikers along the trail in the Spring of 2012. The most memorable was a hiker, trail named "Loner", who was posting videos via YouTube. His videos stood out because they were 1) entertaining 2) frequent 3) not just about him. It became our go-to show,
"Has Loner loaded any new videos?"
"Yes!!"
"Let's watch them!"
The Tipping Point
Sooo, if there was one tipping point, it was that Loner showed us how much we wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail. Below are a few of our favorites along his journey:
Knowing both of you, I wasn't surprised at all. Jealous? Yes. Surprised? No.
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