Retired life has begun, and we are poised to be on the Appalachian Trail tomorrow! Since my last day of work last week, we've been bopping around a bit in preparation for our hike.

We left Hannibal last Thursday morning after making a stop at Java Jive for coffee and breakfast. I said goodbye to Yasmine, who works at the shop and who always offered a friendly smile and hello, even though I only visited on those occasions when I would be at work in Hannibal. From Hannibal we had initially planned to head east to see the eclipse. But weather out east was rainy, so we decided instead to head down to Jefferson City, Missouri, and spend a couple nights there. On arrival, we stopped at Oscar's Diner for lunch, then found a motel and headed downtown to tour the Capitol building.

While in Jefferson City, we took time to go through all of the stuff we brought with us, which included items that we still needed to store. We headed back up to Cedar Rapids on Saturday and spent 45 minutes at the storage unit rearranging and stuffing more things in. We have definitely gotten our money's worth on that storage unit as it is packed to the gills.

As part of this, we packed away our last remaining items, including Kristin's purse, my wallet, and all our remaining clothing, except for what we planned to take on the trail and a few things to be discarded along the way. This left us feeling a little stressed and naked, knowing we would have no way to retrieve items we might have forgotten.

Sunday morning, driving North on I-55 out of Bloomington, Illinois, we spotted what appeared to be an airplane on a trailer. Not just any airplane, but a small corporate jet, its T-tail sticking up tall. As we sidled up beside it we saw that it was on wheels, looking somewhat like a bus, with the logo LIMO-JET angled up the trailing edge of the tail. Definitely not something we expected to see on the interstate - it was pretty amazing. Sunday night found us in Warsaw, Indiana, about a 2 hour drive to the center of totality near Muncie. We were on the road the next morning at 9am, and at 11am we found a convenience store on the eastern outskirts of Muncie. It looked good so we stayed, and had a very nice viewing of the eclipse.

We left Muncie and raced up to Ann Arbor for a very quick visit with James, then headed to Detroit to get ready for our flight the next day.

We made it to the airport Tuesday morning with plenty of time to deal with our checked luggage and get to the gate. I was feeling pretty smug walking through the airport with my backpack on my back. I have flown so many times and have seen people with their backpacks, and have been jealous of them. Finally, I'm one of them, and it feels damn good! By the end of the day we made it to Waynesboro, Virginia, our gateway to the trail. We stopped at the library to take care of some business and post this article. We have just a little prep left, and a night's sleep, then up and off tomorrow!