One Week to Go!

That's it... this time next week we'll be in the Southern California high desert staying shaded from the sun and hydrated.

Everyone we know seems to ask, "Are you excited?" The short answer is "Yes, of course." But honestly, it's probably going to be a challenging experience on many different levels. For a long trip that is this challenging, for me to be excited is a little out of character and would be overzealous. I'm looking forward to getting started without a doubt. I can't wait to see what living in a desert for a month feels like, or climbing snow covered passes in the High Sierra's, or walking past giant trees, hot springs, lava fields, and experiencing the rest of what the American West along the Pacific Crest Trail has to offer.

Looking back at the past year and a half, living in Newark, DE has been better than we expected. Anna is days away from completing her Masters work in Historic Preservation of Architecture. I was able to work at a job I enjoyed much of the time. We made a few good friends. For myself the two best parts of living here have been picking up the habbit of bike commuting, and working in a job where I got to talk to a lot of different people about recreation and outdoor sports. I would say I'm now healthier than when we came to Delaware, and any fear or anxiety of talking to people I don't know is gone.

At this point I've finished work at Eastern Mountain Sports, dropped off my car with my parents, we've completed our mail drop schedule and all boxes are set to be mailed out to cover the next 5 months worth of food, and are currently doing the "what stuff can we give away so we don't have to move it" thing. We'll be renting a UHaul to store most our belongings at Anna's Parents house in Richmond and our apartment check out is scheduled for Thursday at 2:00PM. We will spend Friday unloading the truck, Saturday worrying we forgot something, and early Sunday morning we'll fly out of Richmond to San Diego to get to California by late morning.

We don't know where we'll end up after the trip, but we agree on a few main criteria for places to land: First, there has to be distinguishable seasons (that means hot or at least warm summers, and reliably snowy winters.) Second, there needs to be mountains. Anna grew up in the mountains of Kentucky, and I've been starved living in such a flat area for two years. Third, there needs to be the possibility to walk, bus, or bike to work. There's no place we want to be driving routinely. Fourth, there are jobs available (it's tough living without any income after a big trip.) We've looked around and sort of narrowed down some ideas, but can in no way say anything for sure.

All that said, there's plenty of packing and saying goodbye to do here, so I'll get to it. The next post will likely be from on trail.

Thank you to everyone who is supporting us on this trip!