One hundred and seventy-three blog posts (well, more, if you count the other ones, too). I still sort of can’t believe I wrote them all! Thanks, so much, for following along, everyone out there.

I’m here to say: there will be more, too! I have a series of posts planned in the coming days and weeks, about everything from aspects of the trail I didn’t get a chance to talk about (is that even possible?) to life since the trail and lots more.

So: stay tuned!

— Fancypants (yep, that’s still me!)

As you’ve no doubt gathered by now, we did not, in fact, die on the Pacific Crest Trail. Actually, we’re back in Oakland, where we’ve been for over a month. And there’s lots to write about the readjustment back to society, too…but that will come later, after the remaining tales from our trip on the trail.

Despite my long delay in posting them, I wrote blog entries every single night while on the trail, and have them all still. I’m going to post them — a few per day, so as not to overwhelm anybody — until getting to the end. There are still tons and tons of interesting tales and adventures ahead…so, stay tuned! I hope you enjoy.

I’m trying so hard to catch up on posting these blog posts — it’s been almost three weeks since we’ve had phone service, and that means I have a ton of posts to add. (I’ve still been writing posts every night, so it’s not about writing, but about all the mechanics of posting and adding pictures.) We’ll see how many I can get posted before we have to hit the trail again; we’ve made it to South Lake Tahoe, CA, and are headed on the trail up to Truckee next.

I’m pretty careful to set the date on each post correctly, so take a look at that when you see posts going up — they may well be what happened to us two weeks ago. I’m hoping that I’ll get caught up sooner rather than later, and know we’re having an amazing time out here still! If you want to know where we are as of the last time I had cell-phone service, take a look at the “Last Known Location”, “Days In”, and “Miles Hiked” widgets on the side (or on the bottom, if you’re on the phone) — those are easy to update and I get to them every time we’re within cell-phone range.

(Also, if you look at the blog on the web — as opposed to getting email updates — look downwards. They’re ordered by date, so, for example, this one will stay on top for a long time until I finally catch up to this point in time. New ones will show up down a couple posts below until I get there.)

You probably just saw a whole bunch of updates come through on this blog, after a long period of silence. I’m writing new blog entries every day. But it can take 10-20 minutes to post each one, once I have cell service again. This means that I can only post when I both have good cell-phone service and enough free time to be able to do it.

I know a few folks got a little worried for me since this blog hadn’t been updated in a while. I really appreciate the concern, but don’t want people to worry needlessly. It might well be as long as a couple of weeks or more at times between updates, if I’m really busy and/or there just isn’t much cell-phone service around — which is likely to become the case more and more as we head into the Sierra.

Please don’t worry about me just because it’s been a while since you’ve heard. In many cases, it might be literally impossible for me to communicate — without cell service, I have no line out. In others, I just might not have had the time.

In either case, we’ll be just fine. One thing that’s already become clear is that we’re more prepared (and/or more conservative, depending on how you look at it) than about 80% of the people on the trail — and they all make it just fine. We have two cell phones with us. We also have a satellite beacon that works absolutely anywhere in the world, and, when activated, literally calls in the helicopters to rescue us. That turns a whole ton of situations from “grave danger” into “merely deeply humiliating”…and we’re very experienced hikers who both have the gear and the experience not to end up in those situations in the first place.

So, all in all: know that if you don’t hear from me for a long time, it most likely means we’re just deep in the mountains, enjoying the spectacular beauty, still writing, but unable to communicate out for a while. And, when we emerge, you’ll get lots more updates to this blog…and lots more pretty pictures.

And, in the mean time: onward!

A number of folks have reported that the photos at the top of each post were appearing upside-down to them. I believe I have now fixed this for all new posts; if you see this issue for anything posted from Day 26 and later, please let me know by commenting on this post. Also, thank you to the people who let me know about it! I only have my iPhone with me, and they (of course) always display correctly for me.

Also, for anyone not clicking through to the full posts, note that I post galleries of anywhere between a few and several dozen photos at the end of each day, both on Flickr and embedded at the bottom of each post.

Technical folks: …