Educated Escape

Greetings! As Stephen mentioned we are on the brink of our last undergraduate finals week! While it may not be our most difficult, it is still stressful. While procrastinating studying for said finals, I decided to go through some old photos. I thought it would be nice to post some photos of my AT section hike last year and write a little bit about each one. One thing to watch out for on the AT is bears! I saw >10 bears during my time on the trail last summer. Shenandoah National Park Here is what your average shelter looks like on the AT. Shenandoah National Park - Byrds Nest #3 Shelter A view from the inside of the shelter. This one had a fireplace! You can also see the notebook on the ground, this is a trail log. Hikers can write their name and a note in these at each shelter. Hikers use this to communicate with other hikers and to leave their mark! Shenandoah National Park - Byrds Nest #3 Shelter A particularly misty day on the AT. You can see t...

Hey guys, Stephen again. Sorry I haven't been able to post much lately, finals are crazy and I was just accepted into grad school and got a graduate assistantship so I have been doing a lot of planning to get ready for next fall. I wanted to talk about a cool idea that has been spreading through the hiker community. The idea is Hike-A-Day in May. I believe the idea was first started by Early_Riser_71. He is currently doing an AT thru hike and is vlogging his journey. You can follow his trip here  Early_Riser_71  , I am a huge fan of his. Anyway, his idea is to get people all over the country to get out and hike on a Saturday in May. He encourages waking up early and getting to the trail to enjoy a nice sunrise. Then get going on the trail! Set a goal to challenge yourself at the beginning of the day, whether its 2-3 miles or 20 miles its all about challenging yourself. I encourage getting your families and friends involved. This is a great way to take your kids, siblings, ni...

Hey everyone! Today I'm going to discuss one of my favorite topics - food! Having the right food on the trail is of the utmost importance in order to have a happy hike. Getting enough caloric intake and the right kinds of nutrients is essential in order to hike big mile days. To give you an idea of what I like to bring with me on the trail I will give an example menu along with an approximate calorie count. Breakfast For breakfast I usually like to bring something that I can eat while I hike in the morning. Or, sometimes I'll find a pretty spot to eat where I can have breakfast with a view. Poptarts were by far the best breakfast choice for me. They come in at around 380 calories depending on the variety, and you can have one or two packages. I liked to change up the flavors so I didn't get sick of eating them. Another good choice of breakfast food is protein bars, and some hikers even cook oatmeal. I prefer not to drag out the stove in the morning, and opted to g...

I talked about fitness prep in my last post but there is another part of preparing that needs to be covered as well. Preparing your health for the trail. This may seem like an obvious idea. Don't go on a long distance hiking trip if you aren't healthy. But what does healthy mean? Do you have to be genetically perfect to go on a hiking trip? Absolutely not (although some would say that I am 😜😎). I found this awesome video by Homemade Wanderlust. Who Can't Hike the Appalachian Trail  Dixie hiked the entirety of the Appalachian trail a couple years ago and is starting the Pacific Coast Trail soon.  She makes some great points! There are a lot of people who have hiked the trail, and while you may need to make adjustments, this is just another case of HYOH! (see our previous post  Trail Terminology ) So what do you need to get done before you leave for an extended-section hike (what we are doing) or a thru-hike? First of all its time for a check up. Go to the doctor a...

Hello again, Now we've both talked a great deal about the trail and how to prepare, but I think it's time to talk a little more about myself. Talking about my life is not something that I consider myself very good at, so hang in there! The first thing you need to know about me is how I was introduced to the outdoors. My father is an avid outdoorsman and I have no doubt he is the reason that I have this passion for being outside. When I was little we used to go on a plethora of camping trips. My favorite of these were trips to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota. Going on these trips taught me everything I needed to know about camping and hiking, as well as about the gear you need to be successful on these trips. Now enough about the outdoors and on to my academic life. I will be completing my undergraduate studies here in about three weeks! I am receiving a baccalaureate degree in human biology from South Dakota State University. These past four years have ...

Ahhh a nice stroll in the woods. Sounds relaxing right? You are completely right! It is really relaxing, until you try to get up the next morning and you can barely move. Fitness is important! Jack and I are both college students so obviously since we are young and have amazing fitness facilities available to us on campus we were already in shape. Ok maybe not. Jack and I took different approaches to how we would physically prepare. Jack... (Jack here hijacking Steve's post) For my workouts, I focused on a few different things. My first and major focus was weight training. I have tried my best to get to the gym every day and work out. My weight training involved a three day split of chest and back then arms and shoulders and lastly legs. The most important of these days was my leg workout. Last year on the trail I had severe tendonitis in my quadriceps muscle group. This caused severe pain in my knee joint especially when hiking downhill. The best way to prevent that is to st...

Hey again, Today I'm going to write a little bit about one of my favorite hiking related topics - gear. I'd consider myself a hiking gear fanatic! I'm always browsing the internet for the newest and lightest weight piece of hiking gear to add to my collection. How I see it there are three ways to go about buying hiking gear. 1. The cheap method: It is possible to get all the gear you need to do a long distance hike while being frugal. There are youtube videos where a person will challenge themselves to buy all the gear they need for their hike for under $200! Thrift stores, garage sales, online forums, and borrowing gear are all effective methods for gathering gear while on a budget. In fact, most of the gear you need to hike long distance you can probably find around your house! 2. The enthusiast method: Your average camping or outdoors enthusiast will often times already have some nice hiking and camping gear laying around. This involves middle of the road gear (p...

Hey everyone, For my second post I thought I'd talk a little more about the trail itself and what terminology you need to know in order to understand what we're talking about over the next few months. First off, the Appalachian Trail is a ~2200 mile continuous hiking trail stretching from Springer Mountain, Georgia, to Mt. Katahdin, Maine. Each year thousands of hikers called "thru hikers" attempt to complete the entirety of the trail. While thousands start, only several hundred complete the trek. The trail usually takes around 5-6 months to complete for the average hiker. Thru hikers have developed a few terms over the years to describe the various experiences and happenings around the trail. These are a few that we will be using in our various posts: Section hiker - This is what we are! Section hikers will do a portion of the trail varying from a day hike of only a few miles, to hundreds of miles. Trail name - A hiker's trail name is something that the h...

So I am stuck in immunology one morning thinking about how much I hate sitting in class when I hear my friend Jack start talking about going on a hiking trip this summer. I didn't know Doc (Jack) also was a hiker. I immediately asked him about it and a plan quickly came together. We would do a 400 mile section hike on the AT from Pearisburg, VA to Harpers Ferry, WV. What are my reasons for wanting to go on this hike? Why not take a trip and get lost in the woods for a while? (Mom that was rhetorical, stop trying to change my mind) I'm adventurous. I've always been drawn to new and exciting people, places, and ideas. My family went on a trip to Yellowstone once when I was little and looking back I'm sure my parents were exhausted by me during that trip. I was 12 years old and practically sprinted down every path I saw. I wanted to see what was around the next tree, what adventure awaited me. Fast forward to present day, I still have that same excitement. During the las...

Hey all, To kick off the blog I thought I'd do a little introduction post to tell you what you need to know about me, Jack (Doc). I am currently attending South Dakota State University with my good friend Stephen (Prof). This winter I convinced Stephen to do something out of the ordinary which is to take a month out of his life to join me on a section hike of the Appalachian Trail. In fact, it didn't take much convincing at all! Steve was very excited to join me and thus began the long process of planning our trip. While I will leave the details of the planning portion for another post, I'd like to talk a little more about why we chose to take time out of our lives to do this sort of thing. So why should anyone hike the AT? Well I answered that question myself when I took a 17 day, 200 mile section hike of my own last summer through the mountains of Virginia. I still have no idea how I was able to pull this sort of hike off while solo. In the end, however, I finished my...