One more step

Hello everybody from Chattanooga Tennessee! Today is my first day hiking the Appalachian trail! The first step in a journey of a (couple) thousand miles. The AT is a 3500 km long continuous trail through the Appalachian mountain range of the Eastern U.S. It goes through 14 states, starting in Georgia and ending in Maine, well that's the direction almost everyone hikes it at least.  The elevation change is equivalent to climbing Mount Everest 16 times. Most people take 5-7 months, but we're hoping to do it in 4 months. Averaging about 20 miles (32km) a day. The 'we' I mentioned is myself, my brother Skye and our family friend Genevieve. We'll be backpacking, and camping along the way, carrying our own food and resupplying at "trail towns" which are generally every 3-5 days along the trail.

I decided to do this hike about 2 months ago. Biggest reason being that I had the urge to do something different this summer. I've lived in Ottawa for almost 6 years now, and worked 5 summers for the City of Ottawa. I had an awesome time but I was feeling the itch to do some traveling/ adventuring, and this is something I'd been hoping to do at some point for a few years. So it was kind of a "if not now, then when" type of thing. Shout out to Genevieve for jumping on board with just a months notice.

Even though I had two months to plan, I think I left about half of the planning until the last week. My tent didn't arrive in time so I called an audible and bought a hammock, with a bug net and rain tarp, to sleep in. I'm hoping that goes well. I feel like I'm in the bottom 10% in terms of planning and experience, but the top 10% in fitness and energy, so hopefully they balance out. It'll be a trial by fire for sure. Plan A is to give'r and plan B is to just keep given'r.

Big thanks to my mom was who nice enough to drive us down to Georgia. Thanks to my buddies and girlfriend in Ottawa for being encouraging and not calling me crazy. I'm not sure how often I'll be able to update this blog, but I was thinking at least someone in our group should intermittently inform our friends and family that we're still alive. And hopefully somebody reading this is inspired to do some traveling, outdoor activities or to do that crazy thing they've always thought about.

The clerk at the front desk of this hotel is throwing me shade for going over the 15 minute maximum on the lobby computer so I better finish up.

Thanks for reading, catch ya'll later!

   
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zevhRBS4hp4


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