Trail Journals

Trail Journals, Backpacking and Hiking Journals is a great site....sort of a blogging thing, but it is done by people who are hiking the really long trails, such as the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Crest Trail. Most of the hikers keep a journal as they go, and when they hit a town on the trail, they use the public library to upload their journals to this website.

Most of the AT hikers are getting toward the end of their thru-hike....all 2,160 miles of it. Winter will be setting in soon for those who are northbound on it, and so they are beginning to either speed up their pace or start carrying more weight in an effort to stay warm at night in the mountains.

Some of the hikers only record the facts of the day, while others have a lot of humor and personal insight. Some also upload digital photographs, which is nice....although many hikers start with cameras, a lot of them do send them back home to save on weight....so more photos from the beginnings of their hikes than toward the end.

You can scroll down the list of hikers on this page and see the number of entries and photos for each hiker....some of my favorites are Blip, Awol, Bumpkin, Footslogger, and Jan LiteShoe....of course, to each his own. I am partial to the AT hikers, because I am more familiar with it. In fact, I really would like to do a long hike on it someday. I should be able to retire at age 52, so maybe then....unless I happen to win the lottery earlier.

I suppose in the meantime, I will just have to be content with the short hiking trips that the Georgia Wilderness Society provides. We do several short backpacking trips each year, along with some dayhikes and a lot of canoeing and kayaking trips throughout the southeastern USA. As my blog progresses, you will hear a lot more about some of the characters from GWS trips I am sure. The GWS website also has tons of photos from our trips.