Farewell faithful blog readers. We're off for the PCT!

I'm typing this final blog post at Allison's mom's house in Santa Rosa, CA.  The post is part of the final to do list to leave for our summer of hiking. Allison and I have been discussing over and over again how the fact that we will be hiking for 1/4 of a year in two days just doesn't seem real at all.

The last two months have been a whirlwind of preparation.  You've all read about preparing food for the trail, we ended up with over 200 lbs!  Here is a picture of it all packed into the forester.  

You've also read about the huge amount of logistics that went into being prepared to do the trail.  Pictures of hundreds of maps, lists of stats about the trail, and explanation of gear really won't ever do justice to the shear amount of work it took us to successfully do all of the logistics for this adventure.  Once we get back we will write an extensive series of blog posts and try to flesh out the experience of getting ready for the hike in a more detailed manner.  We would have liked to do more posts leading up to the adventure, but there were just not, as you can imagine, enough hours in the day.

Our first section is 30 miles without any water so we will be carrying 14 liters of water or 30.8 lbs.  It looks like the weather for the first part of the hike will be rainy and between 39 and 65 degrees.  While you might think that starting in the rain would be a bummer, it is actually a blessing in disguise because of the lack of water in this section.  

If all goes as planned we will be arriving in Oregon a few days into the beginning of June, then entering Washington around or before the middle of July, and arriving at our final destination 60 miles south of Canada in early to mid August.

We will be in sporadic contact throughout our hike, mostly with our GPS messenger unit.  We will be sending periodic check in messages to 10 people.  We may make a few quick PCT blog updates if we have time and connectivity, but no promises.  Here is a list of people who will be receiving our GPS messenger updates, if you'd like to check in on our current progress:  Allison's family: Laurie or Steve, my family: Tanya, Nan or Cherese, and Seattle contacts: Katie and Jesse.

We have preemptively written several blog posts which are scheduled to post automatically while we are gone.  So, there should be fresh content on the blog periodically.  

In closing, I'd like to say a final thanks to everyone who has supported us, believed in us, followed our adventures, participated in our hiking group, and helped us achieve this once in a lifetime experience.  We love you all!  Have a great summer and we'll catch you on the flip side.