Food

From Bart:   This evening I cooked, for the first time, on the homemade can stove I made at Brad and Senethas house. Perfect! Mushroom flavored rice never tasted so good.

Day 2

Thank you to Kent and Angel for a wonderful night of delicious food, good conversation, and relaxation! And special thanks to Donut Eater, AKA Sydney, the youngest trail angel I ever met! It was a beautiful welcome to the Pinhoti, and we so appreciate all you did for us. PS. The cake you sent with us made a great lunch!

Day 2 greeted us with rain, but happily it was sporadic and when it did pour, it ended soon enough. We had a quick journey on some backroads to the trail. Our feet (well, mostly mine) are not in great shape, so we took most of the afternoon off at a nice stealth spot near water. The next 24 miles-ish are very dry, so we feel grateful to be by this water. We only went about 11 miles, but we want to take care of ourselves so my feet won't explode.

Bart went downhill to get about 6 liters of water this afternoon while I nursed my feet. What a nice guy.

Thanks for sharing

Jo was kind enough to mention all the excitement and trail help on our first day but failed to mention the thing that has us both belly laughing in our tent.

After our wonderful meal at Kent and Angels they offered us to stay and watch a doc which was hard to turn down because of their company and the plush reclining couch.

Jo excused herself to the bathroom and was gone ( I thought) a significant amount of time. The bathroom is just to the left and I heard the door rattling and I was confused at first and when she returned her face was red and she was sweating. I asked no questions as i felt embarrassed of her absence. Later she told me she had locked herself in and the rattling was her trying to get out. I offered no help and we live another day on the trail.

Day 1

Bart and I are resting in Alabama after a truly humbling first day. We have received so much support and kindness in the last 24 hours that we feel spoiled (and very well-fed!). From the hospitality and hundreds of miles driven by Brad and Senetha for our hike, to meeting up with Mother Nature's Son and Blister Bob. . . wow! We had a great first mountain despite persistent fog! This picture, if my technology works, is of those two rockin' trail angels. Thank you for the shuttle, hike, guidance, company, water drop, and cookies! Our lunch break at Weogufka 2nd Baptist Church brought us an offer of showers and shelter, but we had plans to go about 7 more miles for a total of 13ish. We were adopted by Mama Dog for a mile but we think she was just escorting us through Weogufka. Part II of Trail Angel Day 1 coming soon.

Off to see the Wizard tomorrow!

Long-distance ups and downs

There are fun things about backpacking long distances and there are hard things - just like dayhiking, except bigger.  Anyone who has been on a dayhike and climbed over a fallen tree knows that it can be a bit annoying.  But that pain is much, much bigger when you're hiking with a big pack on your back, you're 10 miles into a 15-mile day, and all you've eaten for the last three days has been stale bagels.



Sometimes while backpacking, you come across sections like this.   Should you go over or under or around?  Or call the whole thing off and wait for a teleportation device to be invented?

Or what about bocce ball?

 
 There are definitely days like this - days when I wonder why I didn't take up croquet instead, so I could sip lemonade and hang out with lawn gnomes all day long.  Croquet might have been a better option . . .

Fiskars guest-stars in this entry.

 But then there are glorious moments like this!  The joy of backpacking is that every day, no matter how few miles you go, you're still making your way to the finish line.  The only person you're racing is yourself.  Can you do a 20-mile day? What will you see?  When you wake up, you never know what the day will bring.



Sometimes the days bring snow.  Precipitation is challenging.  But even in pouring rain, the world is a beautiful place, although sometimes it's hard to remember that.  I don't look forward to encountering weather like this on the Great Eastern Trail, but when I look back on the Benton MacKaye Trail snow, I realize that these are some of my favorite memories.  Go figure.



I rest better on-trail than in "real life."
Not sleep better - rest better.
You learn to listen to your body.
You know when it's time to relax.
You become quieter inside.
I'm looking forward to that.





There is something tremendous about knowing where you are and how to get where you want to go.

But, hey, anyone wanna play croquet next summer?

2013

Happy 2013!

Thank you to everyone who made 2012 so memorable.

Thank you to everyone whose love and support is making this hike a reality.

We are excited to hit the trail in a week or so.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!  I hope you have all been blessed with family and friends this holiday season.

Although I didn't spend Christmas with Hillbilly Bart, he sent me a surprise in the mail: a new mascot!  

A lot of long-distance hikers hike with a mascot.  Before I left on my first really long hike (the Appalachian Trail), my coworker Dennis made me a pomegranate monster, who I creatively named "Pomegranate Monster." He even hiked the southern half twice!

 When I went to finish the Long Trail, my friend Gabe took me to the northern terminus to begin my hike, but not before we found a LEGO guy on the ground in Burlington.  I carried LokiTron the LEGO guy throughout the Long Trail.

Last month on the Benton MacKaye Trail, I carried my nephew Ben's Flat Stanley "Flatsta."  I learned that one round of lamination is not enough for a paper dude.

And now, I introduce . . . KATNISS EVERDEEN.  She will be making at least part of the journey with us.  Someone threw bread at her.

On his way

Hillbilly Bart is on his way!

Although I won't be meeting him down south until January 4th, he has all of his gear and supplies ready for our hike at his brother's house in Georgia.  From there, we will get a ride with one of his lovely relatives to Alabama.  He won't see his hometown of Mullens again until he and I have hiked over 800 miles.

Mullens, WV
Our mental halfway point

I am looking forward to spending the next ten days with family and friends.  I am not looking forward to catching the bus to Georgia on January 3rd.  Nothin' like 28 hours on a Greyhound bus to make me SUPER DUPER ready to hit the woods. We both feel as ready as we're going to get, so we're excited to hit the trail!

Merry Christmas to all!

Maildrop preparation

My task today was to find travel-sized supplies.  My timing could have been better, but at least I was not trampled to death by a horde of consumption-driven Christmas procrastinators with their glowing life-sized stuffed puppies that actually wee and the clearance-rack camo-colored ShakeWeights. 

I felt like a dork when I was checking out.  The cashier must have thought that I buy everything in travel-size containers due being obsessive-compulsive or that I give the world's lamest Christmas gifts EVER.  Hopefully neither of those assumptions is true.

My Christmas gift to myself.
Ho ho ho.

Backpack weight is the enemy of every hiker.  Keeping that weight down is priority #2, and it helps significantly with priority #1, which is "don't die in the woods."

Sometimes Hillbilly Bart and I will arrange to have a supply box sent to us at points along the way so we can get new supplies. We can't avoid maildrops, primarily because of maps.

Maps weigh a lot.  

 I have accumulated piles to help us through the trail.  Some piles weigh over a pound. There's no overall guidebook, no one place to access everything needed to hike the Great Eastern Trail.  It has been a delightful journey to find all the resources we need to make this hike a reality.

We begin the trip carrying the maps for Alabama and Georgia.  This keeps the weight down and will keep us from getting overwhelmed.  Tackling the trail in chunks is necessary for sanity.  In Georgia we will pick up Tennessee information and in Tennessee we will get Kentucky maps, and so on.  Along with maps, our maildrops will include travel-sized toiletries, new journals, socks, and so on.  These are things that I have had problems finding in towns during my previous hikes, so I am buying them now.

Some hikers along the Pacific Crest and other long-distance trails mail food to themselves along the way.  Bart and I are not doing this.  First of all, we think we can reasonably figure out ways to resupply from the Great Eastern Trail.  We may not always have the food we want, but we can likely get by, as neither of us is very picky.  Secondly, we are both very passionate about the economic impact that this trail will have in small towns such as Mullens and Pineville, West Virginia.   Trails can mean big business for small towns, and we want to model that by buying groceries locally.

We'd love to get mail along the way.  Email may be difficult to access, and letters can really brighten up a day.  If you send mail to Jo's parents' house, they will include it in the next upcoming mail drop.  Contact Jo for their address.  Thanks to Mom and Dad Swanson for rocking the maildrop situation yet again!

Thank you!

Last week, beloved friends of Hillbilly Bart gathered together at Calacino's Pizzeria in Beckley, WV to send him off in style.  We are both overwhelmed with the support and love we have received from friends and family.  Thanks to the folks who came out that evening!  Your financial support will allow us to stay warm and dry on nights of terrible weather, to eat a hot meal, and to replace gear we destroy along the way.  A special thank you to Calacino's Pizzeria for hosting the event!


Thank you to all who were able to give at this event.  If we have omitted anyone, please let us know.  For a full list of our sponsors, see our sponsors page. 

THANK YOU: 

Thanks to everyone who had to deal with Hillbilly Bart.
He just had his wisdom teeth out and was probably more
incoherent than usual.

• Gerald Hayden and David Hart of Hayden and Hart, PLLC Attorneys at Law (Beckley, WV)  
• Butch and Patty Miles of PCM Contracting Services, LLC (Sophia, WV) 
• Dr. Anthony Flaim D.O. 
• Jerry Zaferatos and Staff of Calacino's 
• Clint and Andrea Houck 
• Todd Houck, Attorney at Law (Mullens, WV) 
• All who want to remain anonymous in their support

West Virginia Public Broadcasting interview

Check out a news story about our hike!  A big thank you to Jessica Lilly for her time and effort that it took to make this story happen! 

If you're in southern West Virginia and want to get involved with TuGuNu Hiking Club, drop the club an email by clicking this link!

Jo's warm-up hike

Fiskars and Someday atop Springer Mountain

I just returned from a 26-day hike from Davenport Gap in the Smokies to Springer Mountain, Georgia on the Benton MacKaye Trail.  My friend Fiskars went with me and completed her first long-distance hike.  She rocked! 

We started on November 6th, and encountered some a lot of Sandy's snow.  Luckily, the Benton MacKaye Trail maintains generally lower elevations throughout the Smokies compared to the Appalachian Trail, so after a few days the snow had melted.

It was great to get out and back into the hiking groove, making sure all my gear will work for a long trip.  On night two, we learned that my tent's rainfly was no longer waterproof.  At all.  I called the company and was able to purchase a replacement and have it shipped to our next resupply point. I'm glad I learned that before hiking the Great Eastern Trail.  Logistics on the GET will be difficult enough without having to deal with gear issues.

The Benton MacKaye Trail was absolutely fantastic and I highly recommend it.  It was nice to hike a trail and need a map; my other hiking experiences have been in places where a person would really have to try to get lost.  It was very good practice for the GET, which in some places doesn't quite exist yet.

On my way back to Minnesota I stopped in West Virginia to go over some plans with Hillbilly Bart.  I leave Minnesota in less than a month, so I am busy planning maildrops, mapping out some roadwalks, and accumulating maps.

Thank you to everyone who helped us out during the Benton MacKaye Trail trip: Hillbilly Bart for driving us to the Smokies, Mom for the roadtrip home,  Mad Dog, Ali, Jen, and Brandon for visiting (and treats!), Mike for being brave enough to pick up two stinky hitchhikers, The Hike Inn for being wonderful people, the Fish Hatchery for going above and beyond, the Green Cove Motel for my favorite zero day on the trail, Mike and company at the Ducktown Copper Inn for being sweethearts, and the Iron Bridge Cafe and Hostel for being exactly what we needed.  Oh, and thanks Sgt. Rock!

Meet Hillbilly Bart

Last day melancholy

Jeff, Joanna, Tim, and Steve (photographer)
blazing the Great Eastern Trail through
Twin Falls State Park.  November 2011.

Today is my last day at my job.  Tomorrow starts the hiking chapter of my life, even though we don't leave for the Great Eastern Trail for a couple of months.

For the last year I have been working as the Great Eastern Trail VISTA here in Mullens, West Virginia.  It's more than volunteering with less pay than a job.  It gave me a chance to move to southern West Virginia and learn more than I ever knew I wanted to learn about landowner issues, indemnity, and shootin' guns.

I'm sitting in my abandoned office at the Mullens Opportunity Center.  When I started my year here, there were three others in the office with me.  It's been mostly just mine since March. Even the plant died months ago.  There's a plastic duck with the number 21 on it that hangs from the ceiling.  This has been a positive place for me, and I leave it today.

There are a lot of things I look forward to about hiking the Great Eastern Trail, but most of all I am looking forward to making it back here, to Mullens.  I can't wait to poke my head into the MOC next spring and seeing who is around.  I hope to meet up with all of you then.  Thanks for a truly fantastic year, and thanks for helping me get so much done.  It wouldn't have happened without our volunteers.