Date: 2007-11-25
To: I Think I'll Go For A Walk 
Miles today: 0.0

Hello everyone, My plans for the first half of 2008 are coming together nicely. :-)) I was riding my bicycle from Nashville, TN to Natchez, MS on the Natchez Trace a couple weeks ago and my mind started wandering to what I would do next. I had been thinking about riding my bicycle from San Diego, CA to Key West, FL on the Southern Tier Bicycle Trail, but I wouldn't be able to start that until sometime in February of '08. I did some quick math in my head and realized that it would be 3 full months before I could start. That was too long to wait. :-)) The other adventure I was "kinda, maybe" thinking about was walking south from Canada to Mexico on the Continental Divide Trail. You can't start that Trail until at least the middle of June because of snow levels. June is just too far away for my mind to grasp. ;-)) I had been in Florida about a month ago to take the Grandkids out for "Grandkid's Day"....that's when I pick up Cody, Nikki, Elise and Christie about 7am, then we spend the day playing....doing whatever they want. Grandkid's Day usually lasts until about 11pm of that same day....about 16 hours of playing. :-)) We ended up at Universal Studios in Orlando this year. I went back to Orlando the next day to see a friend by the name of Greyhound (a Triple Crowner as of this year!). He works at an outfitter in Orlando and I had a winter sleeping bag in mind that I wanted to talk to him about. I ended up ordering a Western Mountaineering Zero Degree Kodiak bag with a Gore Dri-Loft shell. My old Western Mountaineering 10 degree bag has a light weight shell that just seems to suck the moisture out of the air and always feels damp on the AT. You can pour a cup of water on my new bag and it will run right off the shell. I got that new bag and have used it a few times inside my RV in the north Georgia mountains. I haven't had the power turned on in my RV because I'm only planning on being there a few weeks in the next 8 months or so. (Guess I'm too cheap. Ha!!) It was 27 degrees inside the RV when I woke up yesterday morning. I only had my new sleeping bag over the top of me like a quilt (not zipped up) and I was nice and toasty warm. :-) I only brought that sleeping bag up because, in my long winded way, I'm saying that I knew I would do some winter backpacking this year. I wasn't sure where or when, but I knew I wanted to get out and do some walking in one of my favorite seasons of the year....somewhere!! Let's see, where was I?? Oh yeah....I have kind of made a tradition of going up to Springer Mountain, the southern beginning of the Appalachian Trail, on New Year's Eve for the last 4 or 5 years. There's usually 15 to 30 friends (depending on the weather) that spend New Year's Eve up on that mountain too. There's lots of hammocks and tents scattered around in the woods and usually a couple sobo's that are just finishing their thru hikes show up too. There are usually 2 or 3 people that start walking north towards Maine the next morning...January 1st. That's always tough for me because I always wanted to be one of them. They always had a "special excitement" about them that I didn't have. They were starting a thru hike!!! :-)) The only good thing about not being one of those walkers that were starting their nobo thru hikes was that a large group of the rest of us would go back down the mountain on the morning of January 1st and head to the Smith House Restaurant in Dahlonega, GA for a fantastic buffet which always consisted of lots of very good fried chicken. :-)) I'm going to miss that fried chicken on January 1st because I'm going to be one of those couple of people that wake up on Springer Mountain on New Year's morning, full of adventurous excitement, and start walking north to Maine!!!!! :-))