I'm back. Well, I have been back, for a while now. I successfully completed my thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail on September 19th. It was a wonderful thing. The whole hike; the pain, the people, the towns, the lessons...it ALL was wonderful. Post trail life was/is hard. Re-introduction into society is tough and somewhat depressing. I was in denial at first and spent many nights in my tent and many days enjoying the fall foliage while hiking in my beloved White Mountains. A month passed and the first frost came which is when I decided I needed a more permanent structure than my tent (not to mention I think my parents were getting a little anxious for me to move out of their guest bedroom) so I found an apartment and a job in the Mount Washington Valley and couldn't be happier. I have pretty much settled in and have decided it is now time to catch you all up on all the gritty details of my Appalachian Trail thru-hike. Be warned, be prepared; I will sugar coat nothing and spare no nasty detail. I want you to have the full experience, after all!
Besides the Weebly app for iPhone crashing all the time while I tried to write updates from the trail, my negligence to my blog was also a result of many other factors which are as follows:
1) Hiking the Appalachian Trail is exhausting. Writing takes energy. I had no energy to spare most of the time.
2) When I got to a town my priorities were, in no particular order; eating, showering, resupplying, eating, calling my parents, laundry, eating, sleeping, eating and possibly having an adult beverage or two.
3) WiFi was close to non existent in many of the trail towns. Some towns had libraries which would let you use their computers for free or little charge. As it turns out dial up internet is still widely used in some small towns. Along with Netscape. And, most of these small town libraries were open 2 or 3 days a week, for 4 hours at a time. What I am getting at is that after hiking for 100-120 miles a week the last thing I wanted to do was hike to the local library that may or may not be open to use their dial up internet to try to update my blog.
So, I hope you understand and I hope you will forgive me and I hope you will read along and be amused as I spend the next few weeks (months) updating this blog with my tales, trials, tribulations and follies that I experienced on the wonderful 2,185.3 mile footpath known as the Appalachian Trail.