Date: 2014-08-31
From: California

To: California
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: scattered clouds

Just spent several fun, wonderful days camping and hiking in Zion National Park with kids, grandkids and two other families. Pretty awesome! Waterpark tomorrow for a granddaughter and grandson birthday party! :-)Guest Book. Thank you to everyone who has left comments in the Guest Book - I certainly enjoy reading them! :-)Each time someone posts an entry, Trailjournals sends me an email with the comment and their email address if they¢ve included it. (Their email address doesn¢t show up on the website.) So I get the comments whenever I¢m in a place where I can check email ¢ I don¢t have to go to the website to see them.I haven¢t done a particularly good job of acknowledging or responding to all the Guest Book posts, especially when no return email address is included. I¢ve listed the contributors below in an effort both to thank them for their encouragement and to let others learn just a little bit about some of the folks who have meant a lot to Linda and me over the years.I¢ll go in roughly chronological order of their posts:Ellie Baughman/Hummingbird ¢ to my knowledge, I never met Ellie on the trail, but she kept a journal and had to get off after 600 miles due to a leg injury. Hope you recover well, Hummingbird!Hppyhkr ¢ don¢t know who she is, but appreciate her comment about Worthy!Stargazer ¢ very nice guy I met on one of my hiking trails near home.Tic/Bruce ¢ I¢ve talked about Tic in my ¢About¢ section. He originated the nickname AstroGuy in his trail journal during his AT hike a few years ago. We communicate outside of the Guest Book, so many of his posts are there to help other readers be aware of information resources, and to remind me to post helpful information!Joe Lynch ¢ I never met Joe, but appreciate his comment!Bob Foerster ¢ longtime friend. Bob was one of the 12 Teacher in Space finalists and a Purdue alum. He was instrumental in connecting me with the folks who brought me back to Purdue to work in ¢04-¢06. I also use him as an example to folks getting knee replacements ¢ after retiring as a school principal, he had both knees replaced at the same time and went hiking with me in the GA mountains just a few months later! (Bob, I¢ll be doing a complete gear review in a post-hike journal post.)Bill Fairback aka many other entry names ¢ longtime friend with a great sense of humor. Although I have no proof, I¢m certain he¢s the one making the entries as historical figures associated with my various locations on the trail. He and Critty serve by supporting/encouraging folks in Washington, DC. Thanks for your encouragement and your history lessons, Bill!Patti and Dave Leestma ¢ dear friends in my Astronaut class of 1980. I like to point out how well they educated their six kids as demonstrated by all three of their boys graduating from the Air Force Academy, even though Dave is a Navy guy who graduated from Annapolis ¢ so the boys must be smarter than their dad! All three girls graduated from Texas A&M. Wonderful family!Robyn/Deja ¢ never met Robyn, but appreciate her comments!Faith ¢ my dear, wonderful sister! Thanks for your support and coming to hike with me!Sarah Gardner ¢ one of our wonderful daughters and my hiking companion on many of the AT sections I¢ve hiked before as well as on several sections of this hike.Stu & Debbe Johnson ¢ longtime dear friends. Stu and I were classmates at USAFA, and teased each other about not being rocks anymore and becoming more like butter puddles - due to Linda and Debbe. (See July 18 post for explanation of a rock.) They always have good counsel when we¢re seeking the Lord¢s will in our decision making.Marilyn and Rich Moore ¢ good friends from our time in Georgia at Riverside. I would not have been able to lead the folks there without Rich¢s wise advice.Bob and Lyn Watson ¢ good friends, the first folks I got to know at our church in West Lafayette, IN. I emailed Bob that I¢ll have to pass on his marching orders since I¢m still working on following the higher marching order of loving my neighbor! Thanks Bob and Lyn for your love and support!Laurel ¢ Had a lot of fun with Laurel and Faith when they came out to support me in VA. It was even fun for me to ¢rescue¢ Laurel when her knee started hurting on our hike together ¢ not sure how much fun it was for Laurel, though! Thanks for your support and coming out to hike, too!Linda ¢ My amazing, awesome wife of nearly 45 years! Thanks for supporting me in this endeavor, too!Greg Lindemuth ¢ Williamson¢s CFO/business manager/IT manager/many-other-hats when I was president there. I depended on Greg a lot for knowledge and counsel! Greg has hiked about half the AT¢¦ still time to do the rest, Greg!Frank and Ellen ¢ wonderful new friends of ours. Part of a church home group in our new neighborhood, helping look after Linda while I¢m gone!Ron Pomeroy. Ann & Rick Couch, Jeff and Anne, Mike Marks, Roberto Chiasserini ¢ all very good friends from our Test Pilot School Class 75A. Jeff and I were classmates at USAFA, but didn¢t know each other until TPS. They were also stationed in the Philippines with us and we¢ve become very good friends over the years. In November, they¢re setting sail on a two and a half year journey around the world in their sailboat. We often greet each other with Groucho glasses and the expression ¢It¢s time to have fun!¢Gale Brown ¢ our daughter Sarah¢s best friend from elementary and middle school. Still best friends!Jerry Ross ¢ I thought of Jerry on the trail whenever I ate pretzel m&m¢s. They taste a lot like malted milk balls and Jerry always had malted milk balls on his shuttle flights. Jerry was in the TPS class behind me and we ended up in the same Astronaut group in 1980. We were scheduled to fly together on the first space shuttle mission out of Vandenberg AFB, CA, going into a polar orbit. After the Challenger explosion in 1986, space shuttle flights out of Vandenberg were cancelled, and Jerry and I flew on space shuttle mission STS-27 together. Jerry was the first person to fly seven times in space. He just came out with an autobiography, which also has a children¢s version.Brett Watterson ¢ Brett was assigned to fly on the Vandenberg space shuttle mission with us as one of the military payload specialists trained to fly on the shuttle with military payloads. After the cancellation of shuttle flights out of Vandenberg, the military payloads were shifted back to unmanned rockets and the military payload specialist program was cancelled. Brett, a VMI graduate, had planned to fly a set of Gen George Marshall¢s stars on the flight, so we flew them for him on STS-27. I had the honor of presenting them to the George Marshall Museum for Brett after our flight. Thanks for your encouragement, Brett and Ruth!Jen/Jennifer Teems ¢ our other wonderful daughter and the mother of our grandkids!Jack Kunz ¢ another of our TPS class good friends. I hadn¢t heard about the Buckeye trail, but it sounds like a cool goal to finish it off, Jack! Interestingly, I¢ve met lots of Ohio folks on the AT.Andrew Wilkinson ¢ never met Andrew, but appreciate your encouragement!Spence Gardner ¢ me awesome brudder! Been praying extra for him as he goes through some medical issues. (The trail is a good place to pray for folks!) Thanks, Bro!Emily Dalton ¢ one of Dave and Patti¢s six wonderful kids. She and Joe and their kids hosted Linda and me last year at the Christian camp on Lake Tahoe where they live and work. Thanks, Emily!Mike Mullane ¢ Mike was in the astronaut group two years ahead of me and we were scheduled for the Vandenberg mission together with Jerry and Brett. Mike, Jerry and I later flew together on STS-27 with Hoot and Shep. ¢Twas a great crew ¢ full of expertise yet full of fun, including teasing anyone who showed any signs of an inflated ego! Years later, Mike introduced me to the company that hired me to speak to school kids around the country for a year.Tom Jones ¢ a younger astrounaut with whom I overlapped in the astronaut office for a couple of years. Tom now lives in the DC area and likes to visit Civil War battlefields. We recently hiked some of the trails near our house together.James Jones ¢ another reader I haven¢t met, but appreciate his encouragement!Crip ¢ Crip was assigned as my commander on the first shuttle flight out of Vandenberg AFB, where I was scheduled to be the pilot. What a great mentor! Crip was the pilot on the first space shuttle flight, STS-1, and went on to command three other missions before being assigned to the Vandenberg mission. No one knew more about how the space shuttle worked and its operational procedures than Crip! He also had a good sense of humor and the ability to look at issues from a broad perspective rather than a narrow astronaut-office-only perspective. I learned a lot from Crip! Wish I could have flown with him, too. After the Challenger accident, Crip went on to various leadership roles to help get the program back on track. Thanks, Crip!Wayne and Marie Watson ¢ wonderful folks! Wayne was my boss - the chairman of the board - at Williamson. Wayne is a Williamson alumnus who went on to Penn State for an engineering degree. Marie was the daughter of the Williamson carpentry shop instructor and grew up on campus. They both are incredibly dedicated to Williamson. Wayne knows all about the ¢Pennsylvania rocks¢ having led Boy Scout hikes along the AT in PA.Linda Bierly ¢ trail angel in PA! Thanks Linda!Soggy ¢ section hiker I met on Mt Williams. Good conversation!Mark Franson/Swede ¢ good friend I hiked with my last two days into Franconia Notch. We¢ll hike together through the rest of the Whites when I get back on trail in September.Short ¢n Sweet and Greybeard ¢ wonderful hosts in Norwich! Thank you! Texas Tornado ¢ we never met on the trail. Texas, I¢ll have some thoughts, hopefully words of wisdom, for future hikers in my ¢post flight report¢ after I finish the trail.