A (not so) lengthy blog.

As Mom ordered, a lengthy blog.

What life is like on the trail.
(Only 70% accurate)

Imagine waking up to the song of birds, right at the first light of dawn (5:25 am). You sit up and put away your bed with mechanical ease. You also wake to find that it rained during the night, and your tent is wet, all the same, you have to put it away.
You mix your normal breakfast drink and add the instant coffee to it. Oddly enough, it's one of the only foods you don't get totally sick of.
You finish packing your pack by 6:15 and head out for a 20 mile day.
The leaves above let loose the water they held kindly all the night, just so they could give you a morning shower, and the tall grass sees to it that your feet stay nice and wet.
Above, the caterpillar have started their descent on long silks to catch on you as you walk by, and the spiders, having left their webs, give you the same greeting.

The morning cool gives way to the heat of the noon day sun, and the humidity levels exceed 200%.
You've sweat 1 1/2 liters of water by 9:00 am, and you chafe more than you ever have, you try all you can to alleviate the pain, and yet almost nothing is achieved.

You come to the first water source of the day at 10:00 am, filter a liter of water in to your pouch, and down another.
The mosquitoes have devoured your arms and legs at this point of filtering water, while you struggle with opening a packet of drink mix, wishing that all of them would just go to a fiery underworld.

11:00 am rolls around and you've eaten half of your daily snacks and are trying to wait another hour for lunch.
Gnats suicidally attack your eyes.

By 2:30 pm you're half starved with 6 miles to go and the pointless up and downs become even more pointless.

You crash into your planned camp site at 5:00 pm to find that it's full, and decide to press on another 5 miles to the next water source.
Your guide book doesn't mark any camping so you hesitantly stay at a barely passable campsite just before the water.
In the morning you find that the water source has one of the best campsites on trail.

Now all of that sounds very negative, and you may be wondering why anybody would want to do a through hike?

A few answers.
Very few responsibilities.
No worries.
If you're around somebody that wants to argue, you can just leave the shelter.
You can eat more than you ever have, and you still lose weight.
You make close friends incredibly quickly.
It's very peaceful.
The views.
No true schedule.
The people you get to meet.
The oddities that you get see/be part of.
Travel.

Overall, this is a fun thing, but there are a lot of hardships that you have face.

Current mile: 1293.4 with 895 miles left.
We are in the town of Delaware water gap, PA.

Various pictures.