A Last Hurrah

The Louisiana countryside is pretty much a perfect place to relax do some final preparations for a couple of days before leaving.

We’ve brought all the resupply boxes inside, laid them all out in neat rows, gone through our packs one last time, prepped them for the plane trip, done a last load of laundry…pretty much everything that can possibly be done. We have only a little bit of stuff to do today (most of which will be spent at an Easter celebration at Clare’s grandparents’ place, in a nearby town), and then we’re finally ready.

It’s both a little nerve-wracking and exciting Above all, it’s a strange experience this way: in no other thing I can recall is everything so front-loaded — we’ve been preparing for months and months, and, yet, once we start on the trail on Wednesday morning, there’s suddenly little else to do but walk. Sure, there will be gear adjustments and resupply stops along the way, but, by and large, the planning phase suddenly stops and the hiking phase begins. It’s going to be an abrupt transition, no doubt. It still doesn’t seem completely real.

Photos from Louisiana are: relaxing on the side porch with beer, cows chilling out just at the edge of the fence in the back yard, the PCT map her parents put up on the back of their bedroom door to track our progress, her father with the giant flaming spear (seriously, this thing is awesome) he got for being the King of their Mardi Gras parade this year, and her mom with one of her friends’ sons.

(By the way, bringing the last of the resupply boxes inside is, in and of itself, a huge relief. The elevator in our building broke literally about three days before all of the food from Amazon started arriving — and we’re on the sixth floor. At this point, we have carried all roughly 600 pounds of food all the way up those stairs…and back down again. I am so glad to not ever have to do that again.)