So it’s 12:10 AM right now. I’m laying awake in a twin bed while Dylan, “Tramp,” is completely knocked out on one side, and the dogs are knocked out on the other. It’s hot in this hostel room.

In case you wondered, I regret none of that picture. It’s merely payback for all the ones of me that Tramp insists on taking.

So, anyway, I am laying here thinking about the fact that, the day after tomorrow, we will be picking up a rental car and beginning our two day drive to Bangor, ME to start the SoBo section of our Thru.

We’re slow. That’s a fact. We have never denied this, rather, we typically make jokes about it; especially when asked the oh-so-fun-and-not-at-all-mildly-embarrassing “so when did you start?” But, on top of being (ridiculously) slow, we are social and very easily sucked into the vortex of many of the towns we’ve hit along the trail. This means that we, after almost four months on trail, have only accomplished 426.9 miles.

So there is zero chance we are going to finish this season. In order to complete the trail by the largely acknowledged October 15th end to Katahdin access we would have to increase, overnight, our average mileage to 19 a day and not take a single other zero until we’re done. That sounds like, in addition to hell on the pups, actually not even the tiniest bit fun.

And fun is kind of the entire point of this hike.

Which brings me to Plan 47: Flip Flop Option D

We had always planned to flip. We knew there was no way we’d be able to go straight through as both flatlanders and, speaking for myself, an avid hater of all things cold winter is a miserable bitch. Originally we said Harpers Ferry (about 675 miles from where we are now), then it changed to “major town nearest us at end of June,” then it was Damascus, now it’s Hampton.

Maybe I should explain a Flip Flop? There are three categories of Thru Hikes:

  • NoBo: North Bound, straight through from the Approach Trail/Springer Mountain to Mount Katahdin, typically start early spring and end mid/late fall
  • SoBo: South Bound, opposite of NoBo, typically start early/mid summer and end mid/late fall
  • Flip Flop: hike the trail in two pieces, back to back, and often one NoBo one SoBo; most common flip spot is Harpers Ferry

At this point we seem to be inventing a fourth category I will call WoBo – “Wiggidy Wack Bound.”

So this is the newest plan; although, as previously discussed (I think?), planning is mostly a waste of time out here. The new plan is to hop North now, hike South until it’s too cold, find somewhere to hibernate (read: work our asses off through winter), then get back on trail and finish.

See, there is a kind of leeway in the “traditional” definition of Thru Hike in that you have a rolling twelve months from your start date to finish the trail and still reasonably call it a Thru. So we have until April 17, 2018 to complete 1763.4 miles. If we say that we hike through the end of October and then from March and beginning of April, that means we have 155 days to hike them. With no zero days we would have to average 11.5 miles per day to make that happen. Since we are prone to zeros let’s assume we will take 4 zero days a month, because Vortex. So actually we have 135 hiking days at an average of 13.1 miles per day, which is still not unreasonable for us.

This is the kind of shit I’ve been running over in my head for three days. 

I’m exhausted. It would be so easy to play the “We’ve Done More Than Most Ever Will” card and return home and jump back into our lives. Or not jump into them, but still get off trail. That seems so appealing. Having daily access to showers and laundry, not having to spend a fortune on expensive ass dehydrated dog food or carry 35 pounds on my back every day, make money instead of just hemorrhageing it. Get my eyebrows waxed. But that would be quitting. We haven’t done absolutely everything possible or exhausted every option yet, so how can we in good conscience go home?

Yes I’m tired. Yes I’m sore. Yes we’re slow. Yes our packs are too heavy. Yes we could just finish it over more time as a section hike. Yes we could probably move faster without the dogs. Yes to probably all of the questions.

Except no. No, we don’t want to stop hiking. No, we don’t want to do it without the dogs.   No, I don’t need time off to heal. No, I don’t want to skip the views. No, I don’t really care about traditional.

So I am, though I probably speak for both of us when I say this, coming to terms with the turns our hike has taken. Granted, we aren’t really traditional people, but there is something to be said for the crushing realization that you won’t meet a goal you set out to, at least not in the way you had set out to meet it.

I don’t even know if I’m making sense. I really should be asleep, but my brain won’t stop moving and I have this crazy friend Samantha who is coming to visit from Australia by way of Illinois and who should be here in about half an hour.

It is now 4:06 AM

I guess what I’m trying to say is that we’re just going to keep doing this hiking thing until we really and truly can’t anymore. The plan has gotten more than a little wonky, but sometimes you just have to deviate from the path and go a little WoBo.

Much love,

Lady