Thursday, July 07, 2011

movin on up

we're in our elemennnnnt!!!

1200 miles and 4 states down! We just arrived in Charlottesville (changed up the route a tiny bit) after a couple of days hiking on the Appalachian Trail...

Hiking seems like it would just be a nice time out in the woods, but really it's just a chance to learn some valuable lessons while not being able to shower. Here are a few lessons we learned on our short venture on the AT:

1. Hiking uphill is tough. For you runners who go out and run 12 miles on a Sunday just 'cause: this ain't the same.

2. Hiking downhill is tough. And not even in the same way as uphill: when you're hiking uphill and your legs start to burn past their functioning point, you can just stop and rest; on a downhill, when your legs (which are tired from going uphill) get shaky underneath your full weight, you just fall.

3. The AT has a lot of both uphill and downhill.

4. Keep an eye out for the blazes marking the trail.

These (above) mean, "Yes, you're still on the correct silly ole trail, tramping through the mountains for no real reason except to say that you did."


And these (above) mean absolutely nothing. Don't follow them unless you want to get lost.

5. It's hard to judge mileage with a pack on your back. We still don't know how many miles we actually covered; probably not very many. We think that bald in the distance is what we got to before turning back to our car.

Here are a few other pics of our rain- and cloud-filled hike:


Tomorrow we'll check out UVA and Charlottesville, then head to Richmond for a few days.

road trips. woot!

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