Cooper Jackson

We put another 50 miles of progress on the Mountains to Sea trail (MST). We are now 100 miles into it… about 10%. Lateef thinks maybe 30% due to the fact this is the most strenuous part, however after hiking for 2 weekends you start to get focused a little much on things like that. The 100 mile mark was a great celebration and maybe a little too much wine. And we ended at the Pisgah Inn. Not only is the food good at the inn but the views are amazing. It was a nice break from the woods, woods and more woods. We did hike a bit on the parkway just to see some views one day but mostly we spent it in the woods. We are excited for the next section because it ends in Asheville. After that my guess is we will be excited for the bicycling to start but that is a good couple hundred miles from Asheville.

Crazy thought Lateef has had is sailing from New Bern and throughout all the outer banks section. This of course means we need to learn to sail and rent a sailboat.. Probably more likely is taking a canoe, and even more likely we will just bike to the end and save ourselves a lot of time. For now though we will be looking to learn how to sail to see if that is possible. So where do we learn to sail? Is it easy to rent a boat we can take up the coast? Guess we don’t have to worry about that for a couple years.

There is a ~900 mile hiking trail that goes from the western edge of North Carolina all the way to the eastern point of the state at the beach. Completing this trail has become one of our goals. We did the first few miles 2 summers ago and decided to put some more miles under our belt. The first day we walked 20 miles, which is most likely the furthest I have ever walked at once. Actually it was more like 22 miles, since we got lost once and had to backtrack another time for a dropped map. The following day: 13 miles, and by the end of the trip we had racked up another 12. This was during peak leaf changing season, so our focus on how painful our muscles felt was diverted by the pretty colors.

We hitchhiked each day to get to our starting point, and left our car at the end destination. We got a ride from a couple who had invented a recumbant bicycle carrier, another from a neurosurgeon attending a nearby (neurosurgury) conference, and a couple from Florida (big suprise) who were out being ‘leafers’. Can you see why we got picked up so fast each time???…

It is unbelievable that it has been almost a clear decade since we have been together. Little did we know 9 years ago of all the things we would be getting ourselves into. We went for a hike and enjoyed the wonderful outdoors. Crowders Mountain. (sometimes known as crowded mountain) had a lots of poeple out enjoying gorgeous Sunday afternoon.

As nice as it is to look back on the 9 years

we are really excited about looking forward.