This is the last Wednesday of February, and the last blog post for the month. We have been preparing for our return to the Appalachian Trail for a while now and are ramping up that preparedness as we approach our departure date of March 10th. With our time left at home running short, we have decided that this would be a good place to press the pause button on our weekly blogs.
Writing these posts every week has been a joy and we are thrilled at the following we have built up and all of the comments surrounding our weekly thoughts. Our focus for the next few weeks needs to be dialed in to gear, resupply boxes, planning our first few weeks on trail, and, most importantly, Bayley.
Everything surrounding our leaving for the trial, and even everything while we are on trail, is easy for us to plan and adjust to. The most difficult thing about this entire trip is leaving our dog behind and we were faced with a challenge about a month ago when we learned that what we thought were solid plans for her care for 6 months fell through. Thankfully we have some incredible friends and it didn’t take long for us to secure two loving, caring, and safe homes for her to live at while we are gone.
Our friends Leslie and Larry immediately offered to take her in and we have been spending a lot of time at their place so Bayley can get used to them, their house and property, and settle in with their other dogs. It has been a great fit and we will be forever in their debt for helping out on such short notice.
Bayley will live with Leslie and Larry until about the end of May when our friends Jennifer and Judy return from their Coast-to-Coast Quarantine Tour. They will pick her up and keep her safe and happy until we are done with our adventure in late August or early September. Bayley was going to stay with them last year while we were gone and loves spending time with their dog, Wyatt, and cats Mister and Rooty Toot.
If you follow our YouTube channel, you’ve probably heard us mention Jennifer and Judy a time or two. They are the duo that makes up Notable Exceptions and their song “Outrun The Rain” is featured in all of our hiking videos.
Because their normal winter tour schedule, and really their tour schedule for all of last year, was cancelled, they decided to embark on a different kind of journey this spring and will be traveling to Florida, then finding us somewhere on the Appalachian Trail and following us for a bit. When they are done playing trail angel they’ll head off to the Cape Cod area to see friends before making the trip back to Washington State. They will be performing “flash mob” style concerts as they travel and have set up a subscription option on their website where they will post stories from the road, photos, and videos of their adventures for those who have “bought a ticket to the show” (subscribed).
We encourage you to check them out and become a subscriber. They are a hoot to see in concert and I’m sure the casual style of these performances will be fun to see. Click here to visit their subscription page.
So now that we are deep in prep mode for our upcoming thru hike, where does that leave our weekly blog? Pressing the pause button gives us some room to play a little and not be so structured to posting something every Wednesday morning. We will most likely add a random post and some current photos during our travels and will have lots to say about the way our lives are changing as we learn new things and become more experienced in the thru hiking world.
Our Instagram page and YouTube channel will be the best way to keep up with our shenanigans.
We will post photos regularly on Instagram and our YouTube channel will be updated daily with videos from the trail. We welcome new subscribers and love to read comments and questions about our travels. We might even schedule a live chat at some point!
Thank you for following us every week and for participating with your likes, comments, and questions. We hope you have been entertained and maybe even learned a thing or two about us and the things we find fun! We will return to posting regular blogs once we are back on a normal schedule at the end of our adventure. There’s no doubt we will have lots to talk about!
Thoughts shared by Kris
akaTheGirls 