Not sure if it’s the right terminology, but by tri-state we mean NJ, NY, and CT. The tri-state area of the AT starts at mile 1295 and covers 212 miles and bookends with the Delaware Water Gap to the south and Sage’s Ravine to the north, two of the most beautiful parts of the trail.

New Jersey

Jersey was a variety show for us. New Jersey is made of a lot of beautiful spaces if you can get past your preconceptions of Jersey Shore and the Sopranos. In a single day, we saw equal part marshes, rocks, climbs, Taylor ham sandwiches, and board walks. I’ll try to upload a recording of the marshes later, because all the chatter was just mind boggling.

We also played hookey from the trail one day and water parked it with a couple of great friends. Yes, Courtney, you’re invited to the wedding 🙂

New York

So when you’re a state with only a few rocks, what do you do? Apparently, you make hikers climb over all of them. “See, we have rocks!” Jess referred to New York as the “rock zoo” due to the isolated nature of so many large boulders.

The trail also brought us back to Harriman park, where I swam the swim section of a tri-relay while in business school.

Ever sleep at a drive-in movie theater? We did in Warwick, NY. The owner lets hikers watch movies and tent for free on a hill there. So cool! I tried to teach a Bentley owner how to turn off his blinding lights that were pointed directly at us to no avail, but we still enjoyed Toy Story 4, and got some sleep when all the cats left around 2am.

Best part of New York hands down was the area around Bear Mountain. So many (very cold) vending machines! A pool! And a zoo!

Connecticut

The bugs were everywhere during our time in CT, so we tried to race through the state.

We spent an amazing day off with our good trail friends Betsy and John. They brought us to their lake cottage outside of Kent, where we got to meet their grandson Sam and took a couple of dips in the lake.

Sage’s Ravine, wow! Walking through an old growth hemlock forest next to an icy stream was such a treat, and one of our favorite spots on the trail so far.

Sorry Salisbury, you’re no better than Bland, Virginia. Your population is wealthy and your unused library is beautiful, but the way your average citizen treats outsiders is sad. So much fear of that which is different, with only pockets of acceptance.

Quest for the trail’s best lemonade

Have you ever wanted something so bad you couldn’t taste it?!? That’s the best I can do to describe our relationship to lemonade right now. Over the course of fifteen hundred miles or so, our cravings for lemonade have gone from “oh look, there’s some homemade lemonade. Hmmm. Maybe next time.” to “.01% lemon juice. YES!!!!!”

Next year, trail hostels/restaurants please hold a best lemonade contest. We’ll come back and volunteer as judges. But as such a contest is currently only a figment of my imagination, Turbo and I have used the last 212 miles of NJ, NY, and CT (also some of PA) to search for the best lemonade the tri-state area trail has to offer. Here’s what we found:

Ratings (1-5; 5 is best) based on the following criteria:

Taste: perfection is the balance between sweet and sour here.

Temperature: 32.1 degrees please!

Taster mental readiness at time of discovery: lemonade tastes best when it’s 95 degrees and we’re 18 miles into a day.

Our rankings (to date):

1. Humankind Strawberry Lemonade @ Mutzabaughs Market in Duncannon, PA

–Taste: 4, tart with a a good sweetness

–Temperature: 4, 40ish degrees

–Mental readiness: 5, One of the hottest days of the hike; Duncannon is a mini concrete jungle

–Other notes: skeptical of the company, but the lemonade was so good on a hot day!

2. Pitcher of Minute Maid Lemonade @ Mountain Tavern in Branchville, NJ

–Taste: 2, sweet without the tartness

–Temperature: 5, so many ice cubes!

–Mental readiness: 5, exhaustion never felt so quenched

–Other notes: arrived here by pure chance, but the trail provides

3. Joe’s Lemonade @ numerous gas stations

–Taste: 4, tart with a a good sweetness

–Temperature: 4, 40ish degrees

–Mental readiness: 3, post-hike, but not totally spent

–Other notes: top gas station lemonade

4. Plastic bottle of Minute Maid @ Harriman vending machine

–Taste: 2, sweet without the tartness

–Temperature: 5, oh so cold. So good!

–Mental readiness: 3, it was a chilly morning, but we were coming off a hardcore craving the night before

–Other notes: this kicked off an epic day of vending machines. First of seven machines!

5. Wyler’s Light packets on the trail (thanks, Fastball)

–Taste: 2, sweet without the tartness

–Temperature: 1, trail temp

–Mental readiness: 5, nothing is more desired while hiking. Nothing!

–Other notes: never would have imagined that we’d delve into artificial sweeteners, but sometimes you have to scratch the lemonade itch

6. Quart of Natalie’s strawberry lemonade @ Salisbury Market

–Taste: 4, tart with good sweetness

–Temperature: 4, 40ish degrees

–Mental readiness: -1, Everything’s worse in Salisbury 🙂

–Other notes: Anywhere else, and this could have been a winner

Most of the pictures we take out here are of us either smiling or having fun. The flora is beautiful and the fauna interesting.

And it’s true, for the majority of the time we find ourselves getting lost (figuratively) in our hikes and enjoying the time we have together, but at other times we’re in semi-crippling physical pain, homesick, scared of weird people and dangerous animals, arguing with each other, overwhelmed by how much further we have to go, sick of eating the same high calorie processed garbage every day, really really tired (I’ve taken close to 3,000,000 steps already; Jess has shorter legs…), and missing a sparkling cold beverage. Yeah, not fun, and at no time has this been more true than over our last days in Virginia. The “Virginia Blues” that other hikers talk about are very real, but thankfully we’re done here. Mason Dixon here we come.

Dear Virginia,

It’s not you, it’s us. There have been good moments, but this relationship wasn’t meant to last. There will be others. Just not us. Bye.

Kisses,

Turbo and Lighthouse

Most of our time out here is spent climbing and descending the many mountains and hills that make up the Appalachian Trail. But as the trail can be pretty harsh on the body and we have a wedding to prep for, every once in a while we need a day off or a “zero” in trail speak. Typically Jess and I only take zeros every week or two, but what we’re going to do on our next zero is a daily topic for us and the rest of the hikers out here. Remember how excited you were as a kid when summer was approaching? Yeah, that’s how we feel about zeros.

What we do on our zeros:

Eat food

If our ever shrinking waist lines are any indication of our need for calories, getting high calorie meals on a zero is a top priority. On trail I burn 6000+ calories in a day of hiking and Jess isn’t far behind at 4000+. Jess’s favorite zero day food so far is Bo-tatoes (hash browny things) from Bojangles, but other food staples include pizza, sparkling water, and kombucha.

Rest and relaxation

The trail is nice and all, but who doesn’t like a nice bed and a dip in a pool every now and then. Today for instance, we were supposed to start hiking again, but there’s a pool at the hotel we’re staying at and it’s hot outside. Can you say zero?!

Errands

It feels like we spend about two hours at the post office every time we have a day off. The USPS gets us food resupplies, new gear, and our bounce box (a box, almost like a trail closet, that we send from town to town so we don’t have to carry clippers or laundry soap).

Wedding tasks

It turns out that wedding planning takes time and requires the i n t e r n e t these days. Zeros give us a chance to get online so that we can finalize our wedding website (almost done as of today), figure out guest addresses, and make sure we have everything running smoothly so that we’re ready to go at the end of October (yeah, it’s going to be tight, but as they say “Winter is Coming”).

Reach out to John or Jess if you’ve forgotten or lost the passwords to view our progress and most recent posts.

I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more (and then another 1200 miles) just to be the man (and woman) who walk a thousand (really 2200) miles to fall down at your door. Da da da (da da da) Da da da (da da da) Da da da dun diddle un diddle un diddle uh da

(Flashback to 1988 here)

We crossed the 500 mile mark (our 43rd day on the trail) in the Grayson Highlands. The highlands are known for their wild ponies, and today while walking through a downpour we got to meet some ponies.

As a recovering strategist, I can think of no better way to celebrate our first 500 miles than to create a chart… not the best chart I’ve created (bear with me though, I did this on my phone), but what you should be able to see is that we’re speeding up! On average we’ve walked a little under 12 miles per day now, and over the last two weeks we’ve actually been doing just over 16.2 miles per day. Included in these numbers are four zeros (days off) and a few special days (that Jess will explain in a later post). We’re speeding up!!

Here are a few glimpses of what I’ve seen recently.

Bye for now

With every year about 4K new people try to hike the AT. While each of us will hike our own unique hike, one ritual that touches us all is the granting/receiving of trail names. Since being on the trail we’ve met Turtle, Thor (x2), Dropsy, and Chuck Norris. We’ve also been hiking with Brian… who refuses to take any of the different names we have given him (chainsaw, audible, pontus, soap box, and french press). The ritual is special and sacred as a name means a lot both to those we interact with as well as to ourselves and who we wish to become.

Jess-

I tried a lot of different names out for Jess over the last four weeks. “Hey Rocket, ready for a snack?” (She learned to snot rocket on the trail and also requires an astonishing amount of fuel to keep going), “Hey Wonder, what do you think about this flower?” (For about an hour of every hike she’s in literal awe of every flower, bug, and person we meet), “Have you guys seen Wild Flower? I can’t find her anywhere” (yeah, obviously the school connection, but she really really likes the flowers out here), and there were a few others but none really stuck.

The one that finally had legs (well not really legs…) was Turbo. You see Jess really really really likes snails, and she’s also much much faster than I am. Snails and speed = the fastest snail I could think, Turbo (a close second was the racing snail from the never-ending story) . She’s even developed her own song: “Turbo Snail, she’s faster than all the other snails and John, she’s going all the way to Maine…”. Okay, so the song is still a work in progress, but none the less, Jess is now Turbo.

John-

My name doesn’t have its own song yet (Though we did start saying it very loudly one day when we heard what sounded like a very large animal in distress from an even larger animal). We were walking through a cloud one morning in Georgia. It was hard to see even 50 ft out in any direction, but as the other hiker approached he knew exactly where we were from well beyond because of the highlighter green pack cover that I was using for the rain. “Hey Lighthouse!” rang out as his greeting… That moment combined with my extraordinary good looks… okay, okay, my height, made for a sticky trail name. John = Lighthouse

Many of you will have now heard about the attack that occurred on the trail the other day, so we want to quickly let you all know that we’re safe and sound. We are sad and still trying to wrap our heads around what happened, but our thoughts go out to the hikers and families who were impacted. Tomorrow we’ll continue along, hiking with heavier hearts.

John here. Battered and broken (I needed a shower and a mustache trim… Jess doesn’t smell or have facial hair) and craving sustenance (Jess wanted a salad) we stumbled down the hill to our shelter (a pre-reserved cabin). After five grueling days (including the days Jess just posted about), countless miles (probably around 40 miles), strange animals, and being trailed by a dog and a guy

(Craig, thanks for bringing Muffin out to see us for a couple of days!) we made it out of the woods and onto Gainesville Hwy in Neels Gap in North Georgia.

Trail life has really been pretty great so far. We have had some blisters (Jess’s was full of blood) and some aches/pains (I’m still a little chubby), but up until now we’ve been having a great time. Our little trail family for the last few days has included a couple of brothers (David and John), a lone wolf from Missouri (Chadd), Candice from Detroit, Craig, and Muffin.

We’ve walked through slopes of blooming Trillium,

and yesterday we crested Blood Mountain (the highest point on the AT in Georgia @ 4,500 ft… Colorado people stop laughing).