On the Appalachian Trail...

Over the last few months, Jonathon has been working towards the Backpacking merit badge for Boy Scouts (Michael has been tagging along). It requires 3 backpacking trips of 3 days each and 1 trip of 5 days. Here are a couple of pictures of the 5 day trip, which Jonathon completed on Saturday 8/16/08. He has been hiking the Appalachian Trail in NJ, this last trip began south of the NY/NJ state border and ended at the border. He was nervous at first, because backpacking is not like camping out of your car. You have to carry everything on your back, including all of your food, water, shelter, bedding and clothes. Because of the difficulty, Michael told Jonathon that these trips would help him to grow hair on his chest (fortunately this hasn't yet happened, we're not ready for that). Jonathon is also the youngest (and shortest) to get this far along on the merit badge, his final trip towards completion of the merit badge will be some time in the fall. To date, he has backpacked over 65 miles of the Appalachian Trail.

This trip featured hiking to the point of highest elevation in NJ (about 1,800 ft. All of you westerners can stop laughing now) to High Point, NJ (very original, I know). We also slept our first night in a lean-to that was home to some very friendly bats (we like bats on the trail because they eat the mosquitoes). We also endured some rain on a couple of the days, but were well-prepared. I have to say that there is nothing like a nice cup of hot chocolate after hiking in a rain storm. We also met some interesting people on the trail, most of whom had decided to leave behind their lives for a few months to hike the entire Appalachian trail, which stretches from Maine to Georgia, over 2,100 miles. Can't imagine asking the boss for a few months off to go and do that, but there you go. There was plenty of other wildlife, as we also ran across some deer, hawks, many orange salamanders, and even a bear.

The first picture is Jonathon and Michael on the trail, at the NY/NJ border. Jonathon is the one without the beard.

The second picture is Jonathon straddling what we thought at first was the border, but turned out to be an arrow pointing to a side trail known as the State Line (S/L) trail.