I can't remember when I first heard of the Appalachian Trail; all I know is that ever since I first heard of it, it has captured my attention. In fact it has been my plan for many years to walk the trail after I graduated from high school and before attending college. Last year as a part of an intersession, I hiked a portion of the Appalachian Trail. That experience really helped me firm up my desire to make my dream a reality. Well here I am...a high school graduate...finally about to fulfill this dream. My brother, Jonathan, and I have been planning this trip for a while now, although to be honest, due to the great amount of work during my senior year of high school, I have only really been able to start helping out since the start of summer. I owe a lot of thanks to him for this; the amount of work he has put into this is amazing. Planning a trip like this is intense. To give you a sense of what I mean consider this. Currently the plan is to start hiking July 5th, and if we can keep to our schedule, we should hopefully be home a few days before Christmas. We have planned, dehydrated, vacuum sealed, and sorted out into mail drops all of our meals for the time we will be gone. That is six months of food, three meals a day plus snacks...you can do the math...or you can trust me when I say that it is an awful lot of food. The joke going around is, if we fail to hike the trail, we will be all set for Armageddon. With limited internet many of the posts will be added by my Mom, as we update her by phone. Wish us luck.
-Madeline-
