Yesterday was our weekly “big hike” day, when we load up our packs and head out for the whole day.  We do shorter hikes on two other days, but Thursdays we try to replicate “the real deal” and hike all day.

We went for one of our favorite hilly hikes out at Point Reyes National Seashore, where there are plenty of great killer hills to climb, with the bonus of awesome chances to get a “view of the blue”–the Pacific Ocean far below.  It was windy and cloudy when we left the trailhead parking area at Bear Valley and headed right up the first climb–2 miles to the top of Mt. Wittenberg.  I was carrying my new Z-packs pack, which I modified quite a bit by adding more net pockets to the sides.  I love net pockets.  I can stow all kinds of stuff and find it easily without having to open the main pack.

At the top, bummer.  No view of the blue–just cloudy, gray and brrrr, cold wind.  We couldn’t even see the ocean at all.  Oh well–we headed on through Sky Camp and then waaaay down to the road, followed by a rollercoaster contour for 3 miles or so along the hillsides.  But then, wow!   There WAS a “view of the blue” only it wasn’t the ocean.  It was whole hillsides covered with the blue flowers of ceanothus (wild CA lilac) in full bloom.   I stopped in my tracks to take it all in.  The trail was dusted with tiny blue petals and the air was sweet with the perfume of the flowers.  So I did get a view of the blue after all–not waves on the ocean, but waves of flowers on the hills.  Works for me!

After climbing Point Reyes Hill and down the other side, then up and along Mt. Vision, we stopped for lunch in wind so strong and cold that we ended up having to hunker down while we ate instead of sitting up on a bare spot to enjoy the view.  The clouds did lift enough for us to see the ocean–the line of white at the beach was pretty sizeable, which meant that there were some big waves coming in.

We returned the same way we came, and got home tired and happy.  My new Zpacks pack worked just fine, and it is a lot lighter than my  good old tried ‘n true small aluminum external frame pack.  Now for more CDT logistics–there’s still food to measure and bag up!

We greatly admire the hikers who’ve earned the Triple Crown of AT, PCT and CDT thruhikes!  That makes 3 long hikes.  Well, if we can finish the CDT, that makes 3 long hikes for us, so it’s sortakinda a Triple Crown.  Sort of.

We did go have a look at the AT in Massachusetts.  Our impression was “This is a walk in the woods.  No views unless you happen to make it up to the top of something.”  We met some northbound AT thruhikers while we were there and we asked them, “Is this pretty typical AT trail?  Just walking through a forest?  No views, no nothing?”

They all sort of looked at the ground and shuffled their feet and finally one of them admitted, “Yeah, this is pretty typical.”  Another piped up, “Except back in Georgia before the trees leafed out.  We saw some good views then.”  So we brandished our PCT bandannas and told them, “Next time, go do a REAL trail!   The PCT is WAY better than this!”  They all said that was definitely something they planned to do.

We made up our minds at that point that doing the AT is something you only do so you can say you did it.  Not worth it.

Our first PCT hike was in 2005.  I  (3rd Monty) was 57 and Fixit was 65.  He had just retired and we figured, “This is our one and only chance to do the PCT before we are too old and decrepit.”  Wrong!   Doing the PCT got us into such great shape that we decided we had to do it again.  So in 2010, we did.   And now every summer, Fixit hikes the whole JMT–We start at Horseshoe Meadows and go up via Cottonwood Pass, so we don’t have to deal with permit hassles.  I go with Fixit to the top of Mt. Whitney, then say, “Bye, honey, have fun!” and I head back to the car, many miles away, while Fixit begins his race against time.  Each year he tries to go faster than he did the year before.  This summer of 2015, he did the whole JMT from Whitney to Happy Isles, in 7 days and 11 hours.  Not bad for a 75 year old!  The reason I don’t go with him is because there is NO way I want to go that fast!  I love the JMT, but not at that speed.

Fixit and I did the whole Tahoe Rim Trail last summer also, in 7 1/2 days.  It was tougher than we expected, but really awesome.

So the CDT looks like a big challenge, but we think we are up for it.  And it will sortakinda be a Triple for us.

Fixit and I are seriously DINOSAURS out on the trail.  And it’s not just age (68 and 76).  It’s the whole technology thing.  We are map-and-compass people; in fact, Fixit is really good at it!  One of his just for fun things to do when we are on ordinary backpacking trips is to spot some obscure little lake on the map (way off the trail) and use the compass, landmarks, etc. to walk through the woods, over the obstacles, and then bingo–there it is, the lake!  Fixit nailed it again.  Even better in my opinion–he can find his way BACK to where we started.

But we read Yogi’s CDT book and it said “You need a GPS for the CDT.”  And we when we hiked a bit of the CDT near Lordsburg a couple of years ago, we met happy hikers using Guthook’s CDT app.  So we bit the bullet and (gasp) bought a cell phone (Iphone 5) and ever since then have been agonizing over “How does this thing work?”  We figured out how to make phone calls on it, but other than that we cannot figure it out.  Fixit got TWO books on “how to use an Iphone” and we can’t make any sense out of the books, either.  The whole thing is like a giant mystery.  And after a few months, we cancelled the phone service.

“Wait!” you may say.  “What!!! You guys don’t have a cell PHONE???”  Yup, that’s right.  We still just have a good ol’ landline with an answering machine.  The occasions when we might wish we had a cell are so few and far between that the added cost of having cell phone service just made no sense.  When we got the Iphone, we did try phone service for awhile–several months–and in that entire time made only 2 calls.  That’s why we finally said, “Forget this,” and cancelled the service.

There may be light at the end of the tunnel, though.  We have Millennial friends, and one of them has offered to tutor us on the mysteries of the Iphone.  All we care about, honestly, is getting to Guthook’s app, and maybe a weather report.  And Fixit is still muttering about, “Don’t need no stupid GPS.”  So we will see!   In the meantime, we do have the Bear maps and Ley maps, which I carefully marked up so that at a glance we can tell how the two map systems work together.  And of course, there is the trusty compass!