A glorious day today of hiking through the cow pastures. Wow, the calves are getting big–and the bulls are out with the cows now, so we had to be a little bit careful!! Then it was on through the forest till we reached the “view of the blue”–the Pacific Ocean far below us. We could just barely see the breakers along the shore, because it was a very hazy day. But it was the first day this year that we could hike without jackets on! The sun felt so good.

We continue to carry our heavy training packs, and we look for hills to climb, on the theory that the AT has lots of hills and we’d better be ready.

We are still poised to head for our AT thru-hike if all the restrictions are removed.

Meanwhile, our last bit of resupply stuff we are still waiting for is our Emer-Gen-C packets, which we always take along for the good taste and the vitamins. It has been very hard to find any, though, even online. Everywhere you look, it’s “out of stock.” But we finally located a supply and hopefully it will be on its way to us tomorrow.

This whole coronavirus thing is totally stupid and crazy. The bottom line is, “Yes, it’s a very contagious and quick-spreading virus. But No, it is no more deadly than any nasty strain of flu.” To shut down the whole country and scare people to death is just plain awful. What is interesting is that Fixit and I are pretty sure we DID get coronavirus–way back in January or so. The experts are now saying that it arrived in California (that’s us!) way far before the rest of the country. Back in January, Fixit and I both got hit very suddenly with what we ended up referring to as “the cough thing.” I got it first. We were hiking out at Point Reyes–I felt fine in the morning, but around 3:00 pm, I suddenly started having a cough every time I went uphill, and even when I tried to talk to Fixit. Cough, cough, cough. I jokingly said, “Oh bother, it must be the Colorado Cough from the CDT doing a rerun.” (The Colorado Cough is well-known among CDT thru-hikers–you spend so much time at 11,000-12,000 feet (and higher) that the extremely dry air causes many hikers to develop a cough).

But the next day I felt awful–nauseous and very weak. I just lay on the couch all day. And coughed, and coughed. The next day I was better, and after that rapidly got back my strength and energy. But the cough didn’t finally disappear for a whole month. Many of my friends reported having similar symptoms.

We are very much hoping that all the sheltering and other restrictions will lift before May 15. That’s the latest we would be able to start an AT thru hike. We are determined to be ready.

When we heard that the federal government was calling for further restrictions due to the covid19 virus–restrictions that last all the way to early May– Fixit and I decided that our hopes of “The fuss will be over by April 23” were maybe not going to happen. Then we got a long and detailed email from the ATC listing all the trailhead closures and AT trail closures. It was obviously now impossible to hike the AT without ending up in jail! So we cancelled our airline flight and our ride to Amicalola Falls–BUT we have not given up. If “the fuss” has died down by May 15, we will still go for it.

Before the fed announcement, I had already called all our planned mail drop locations to see if they were available at least to take resupply boxes for hikers. Every single one of them said, “Yes! We will take your box for you.” But none of them were open to stay overnight. We figured that was good enough.

Postholer.com has some very interesting maps of the covid19 situation across the USA, with the main trails (PCT, CDT & AT) clearly marked. And as Postholer pointed out–covid is found where there are PEOPLE, not where there are cornfields and wilderness. We still think that worrying about thruhikers spreading covid is a false fear, provided that those hikers hike the way we do, and also observe the recommended rules about distancing and hygiene.

We have all our supplies and are ready to go. We continue to train by walking around our town (which fortunately has some very nice STEEP hills) and we can still go out on the few trails which are still open because they are not on government land.

I (3rd Monty) am also volunteering at the local Salvation Army, giving out food to the increasingly long lines of people who are running out of money and need the free food. Fixit is working with a friend (via the internet) on materials to be used at the Sonoma County jail for prisoners who want to continue studying the Bible. The jail requested these materials and provided the “specs” for them. Under normal circumstances, Fixit and his friends would be making weekly visits to jails and prisons, talking with prisoners who are interested in finding out how God can totally transform the mess they have made of their lives, and meeting with them to study what the Bible says.

One thing Fixit and I have learned from longdistance hiking–whenever something happens that LOOKS LIKE it will really mess up our hike, in the end God always works it out for the best. And we are not in the crowd of well-meaning Christians who run around saying “God is in control”. Yikes! Only a Muslim would say that (I think their term is “Inshallah”). Our slogan is “God is with us, He loves us, and He is always at work”. Then we look for what God is doing in the situation and join in!

So we are very much interested in what God will work out from this whole covid19 mess that we humans have made.