After almost 2 weeks of recovery time from being on the trail, I've settled back into "regular" life, joining Kristin at her folks' house. We'll stay here for a bit until we have our camper rig. Before I got off the trail Kristin did a great job of doing the up-front truck-shopping, making it possible for us to acquire this beast last week. We're expecting the RV itself to be ready mid-July, and plan to be on the road with it immediately thereafter.

The transition from hiking life to "real" life took some time. I've finally - mostly - settled into this new normal, and have been able to gather and organize a few thoughts about my experience on the AT as a long-distance hiker:

• Food and eating on the trail presents an interesting set of competing factors, including weight, nutrition, convenience, palatability, and availability. During the time that Kristin was on the trail, we had pretty good success balancing these factors due to having good grocery stores located near enough to the trail. I mentioned Martin's Foods in an earlier post - this was a great place to find foods meeting our needs on the trail. But as I proceeded further north and east through Pennsylvania, the options for food became less than ideal. Several times I found myself at a "market" that was little better than a corner gas station convenience store, with the usual fare of soda, chips and candy, a few token cans of soup, maybe peanut butter, jelly and white bread.

  Ramen soups can be found at many locations and are commonly used by hikers, including me, but these hardly meet a hiker's nutritional needs by themselves. Hikers typically augment these in various ways to improve them, but when the available resupply sources lack suitable foods, the fallback is to just eat the ramen as it is. At some of the hostels there is a "resupply" shelf with a variety of foods, but often the selections are hardly better than the convenience stores. I found this very surprising and a bit demoralizing, considering that if anyone would know what hikers need the hostel hosts would know - but apparently not so much.

• Logistics is a big part of the thru-hiking experience. Every day, I'd spend significant time planning my next few days. Which shelter will I go to next? Where are the water stops and how much water do I need for each expected leg of the hike? What's the weather forecast and how does that impact my plans? When will I need to get more food? Where can I find services - hostels, groceries, laundry, restaurants? Who are the available shuttle drivers? Where can I recharge my phone?

  I used an app on my phone called FarOut to help with a lot of this, and it certainly does help a lot. Despite the value that FarOut provides, significant time and effort is required to find information and resources and to put together mini-itineraries. I would typically plan my days to be done hiking by late afternoon so that I'd have time to refresh my plans every day; this was part of my daily work.

• Meeting people on the trail is pretty fun. We met all sorts of folks: a couple of earnest high school guys practicing for a future thru-hike; a charming woman our age who was doing a solo flip-flop; a blueberry farmer doing a section hike before harvest season; a guy from Italy that we befriended and helped with his English-Italian translation; a guy who thru-hiked in 2017 and who now likes to hike to shelters to give out beer and soda trail magic; a couple of funny retired guys from St. Louis who were lifelong pals, out section hiking; a woman from Texas section hiking with a group of her friends that kept fracturing into little sub-groups; a father and his high-school-graduating son with almost no experience backpacking - the son being a super charming kid who I helped to build a campfire so he could cook his mac-n-cheese; a cool long-haired hippie-looking dude doing a flip-flop, and who I had lunch with on the day I got off the trail. We found these and many of the other people we met to be earnest and open, down-to-earth, and just genuinely nice.

• For a good part of my hiking through Pennsylvania, there was little else to see or do but to continue moving, and I discovered that, for me, this could become mentally exhausting. I learned that it is really important for me to have variety in my hiking experience: viewpoints to stop and enjoy, wildlife to see and hear, encounters with people beyond the obligatory hello. There were days of fog and mist that shrouded many of the grand views I otherwise could have seen. Those foggy misty days also muted the wildlife. I could go for hours hearing little but my own footsteps and my poles clattering on the rocks, seeing only my feet as I picked through seemingly endless rocks, and seeing no wildlife or interesting plants or flowers. I could also go for many hours not seeing or having a conversation with other people.

  I found that during these times of monotony, my mind would wander and I would think about what else I could be doing instead. After Kristin left the trail, I began thinking what it could be like if we got our camper sooner and started down that path. This was not helpful, as it just made me feel bad about the hiking.

• My body experienced some changes that haven't yet fully become "undone". One big change has been a weight loss of about 14 pounds, accompanied by a reduction of my waist size by one inch. My old pants fit pretty loosely! This is a change I don't mind keeping - but whether I can do this or not remains to be seen. Another change has been in my feet, with numbness in my toes. It is well-known that long-distance hikers can experience toe numbness. My toe numbness is subsiding, but not yet gone.

Though I did not complete the AT as a thru-hike, I can't think of my experience as anything but grand. It is physically and mentally challenging, it combines beauty and boredom, and it taught me how to live with nothing but what I carried. What I've learned I'll carry with me to future hikes, no matter where or how long. I am certain that I'll be going back to the AT in the future, but at this point I need more time to fully process the experience before I will be able to formulate a return plan.

In the mean time I will return to blogging on my main Rambler site. This side-blog is now oficially closed.

Thank you for reading!