...It started with a brown paper bag...

To kick off this blog, I suppose the most rational thing to do would be to talk about its conception and purpose. If you haven't already, check out the tabs above which will give you a snap shot of who we are and why we're here. 

So the birth of this bucket list item started about a month ago while talking with an adventurous friend of mine who is hiking the Appalachian Trail. I was slightly mortified when I came to the realization that I have never really done anything big like that with my life that was just for me. Sure, I have those achievements that I thought would be "it." I've ran marathon distances, even ran across states in relays, graduated from college, bagged me a man, etc., but meanwhile, I still feel like I have nothing under my belt except for very expensive jeans.  So thus came the idea that I should hike my own trail, and do it before I can talk myself out of it. I settled on 300 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail in California. I can't tell you why exactly I thought that one would be better than say, 300 miles of the PCT here in Oregon, but I think some of it has to do with the fact that the John Muir Trail is in California, it includes scaling Mount Whitney (the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States), and quite frankly, have you ever researched that guy? His words are beautiful and I like his beard. That's good enough for me.

A few days later, I suckered my friend Kaity into joining me. We met up for a beer the next evening and hashed out some details. Meanwhile, we got too excited to contain our thoughts (this happens a lot with us), so I got out the only thing I had to write on in my purse, which was a brown paper bag from my lunch, and we signed and dated it, then started adding all the random thoughts we had to prepare for this trip. Some are logical and smart, like saying we need to research and start hiking at least once a week; others are more representative of our personalities, since I'm just now noticing on the photo below that we think we should "buy a little dog, Rudy." 

All in all, the course of this journey has just begun and is continually playing out. We've managed to get in at least one hike a week (some weeks, we get in two or more), as well as changing our workouts to cater toward a month-long hike like this. We're also boning up on our anatomy (pun intended) and care for injuries, so you know, we can feel a little more competent putting our degrees to use. Currently, we're in the process of trying to sucker another one of our good friends into joining us, as he has been hiking most of our day trips with us so far.

But until then, it's just the two of us setting out to do something that nobody thinks we'll actually do; doing things that we never thought we'd actually do.

"If you never leave home, never let go, you'll never make it to the great unknown..." - Needtobreathe