Category: Uncategorized
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It’s All Relative
It became readily apparent on the Florida Trail that dry is relevant. When wading all day in water over my knees, even a stretch of ground with only an inch of water felt relatively dry. On the other hand, ground that had minimal standing water but was full of sole sucking mud definitely did not…
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A quick update
This is just a quick update for all of you who have been wondering what’s going on. I took a week off because I had a foot that was hurting and discovered I had yet another stress fracture in my foot. I’m still in Florida and in a few days I’ll start hiking again. But…
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Optical Illusions
It has taken me a while to get used to a major optical illusion seen across the Florida swamps. Known as cypress domes, these featues are not domes at all. While viewed from almost any distance cypress domes look like small hills, they are in fact depressions! The reason for this is as follows: cypress…
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A Very Special Sendoff
The Florida trail is unique in that it hosts a kick off event each year allowing hikers to meet other aspiring Florida trail thru hikers. A large section of a campground is rented. Thirty or more volunteers show up. Multiple tents are erected with multiple grills, warming dishes and numerous tables loaded with food. Hikers…
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A Mary Christmas
Meeting Pam Casteel and her tribe of adopted special needs young adults when I was hiking the CDT was a highlight of that trail for me. We have maintained contact over the years. Pam knows I’ve struggled to recover from childhood abuse, especially after the way my ex-husband walked out on me. She intuitively and…
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Preparing for a Thru Hike: Shoes
An important thing to determine on each hike is what shoes to wear. For the Florida trail I found this fairly challenging because of the many swamps and promise of wet feet for much of the trail. Also, since this is the first big hike, I’m doing after breaking both my feet on the Pacific…
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The Florida Trail Begins!
This is a very short interlude blog between other blogs to share with you some of the pictures of the Florida trail, which I have in fact begun hiking. Currently, I am 48 miles in and it usually takes a week for the blogs to catch up with me in real time. But in the…
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Preparing for a Thru Hike: Gear and Getting to the Trailhead
One of the first things I do in preparing for a long hike is figuring out how I am going to get to the trailhead. I like driving my car for a number of reasons. I don’t like putting my pack on a plane and if I do that, I can’t take stove fuel with…
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Preparing for a Thru Hike Then and Now: Food and Fuel Resupply
People ask me what it is like to prepare for a long hike and how it has changed over time. While there is no one answer that fits for every person or even every hike, there are some common dominators. Some of these have not changed since I began long distance hiking almost 50 years…
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Thank You
A quick message to say thank you to all of you who want to support my writing. I spent almost all of today, figuring out how to do the upgrade and make things work with WordPress. Literally, I spent at least ten hours on it. I also went to the post office to mail my…
The Mary Badass 