It’s beginning to sink in amongst our friends that we really are about to disappear into the middle of nowhere for several months.\u00a0 Their reactions are always interesting, but not very varied.\u00a0 It’s either, “Wow, awesome, I would SO like to do that (hike the CDT)!” or\u00a0 “No way would I ever do that”\u00a0 or just “Why?”\u00a0 They all say they will miss us.\u00a0 And we will miss them, too.<\/p>\n
But other than friends, \u00a0what do Fixit and I REALLY miss when we are on a thruhike?\u00a0 Actually, not a whole lot.<\/p>\n
We miss having convenient, easy-to-obtain WATER.\u00a0 Wouldn’t it be nice if the PCT and CDT had a water faucet every few miles?\u00a0 If you’ve done the PCT, you will remember the water faucet at Snow Canyon, after you just came down 5,000 waterless feet and countless miles of switchbacks in the heat.\u00a0 Nice!\u00a0\u00a0 But that’s not how it is everywhere else.\u00a0 Every night I spend time stretched out in my sleeping bag studying the “water situation” for the next day and making plans.\u00a0 And then there is the fun of carrying heavy liters of water.\u00a0 And the uneasiness of wondering, “Did the water I just drank have any creepy-crawlies in it?”\u00a0 So one thing Fixit and I miss very much is water faucets, but we don’t miss them enough to make us give up thruhiking!<\/p>\n
The other thing we miss is \u00a0TALKING about\u00a0God with people.\u00a0 There are few opportunities on the trail for going to church.\u00a0 Bummer.\u00a0 But we do have each other, and hey, we can talk to God Himself anytime, anyhow, anyway.<\/p>\n
Maybe it’s\u00a0way down on the scale of things I personally miss, but it is there– is my garden.\u00a0 I pretty much grow all the veges and a lot of the fruit we eat, and I love flowers, too.\u00a0 The wildflowers on the trail are wonderful and I enjoy them immensely, but I’m also a sucker for roses and garden flowers.\u00a0 The first time we did the PCT in 2005, it had been a very wet winter, and the southern California wildflowers were amazing.\u00a0 But when we finished up our first 100 miles and arrived in Warner Springs….there was a ROSE garden!!!\u00a0 Poor Fixit had to wait patiently while I got my “rose fix”!<\/p>\n
So that’s pretty much what we will miss–water faucets, God-talk and for me, gardens.\u00a0 And our friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s beginning to sink in amongst our friends that we really are about to disappear into the middle of nowhere for several months.\u00a0 Their reactions are always interesting, but not very varied.\u00a0 It’s either, “Wow, awesome, I would SO like to do that (hike the CDT)!” or\u00a0 “No way would I ever do that”\u00a0 or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-preparation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions\/32"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}