“There’s a million things I haven’t done… just you wait.” A. Hamilton

What are we going to do?

Russ and I have put in our resignations at our employers and we are planning to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail, or AT for short. First and MOST importantly to Russ, you must pronounce the name of the mountain range and trail correctly.
Appalachian      a-puh-LATCH-uhn

For you visual and audial learners…

As you can see below the pronunciation of the trail is about as split as the political
parties in this great nation (possibly the only political comment in this blog).

The AT is a hiking (only) trail through the eastern seaboard along the oldest mountain

range in the US. The trail spans 2,190-ish miles and traverses 14 states. The trail
begins at the top of Springer Mountain in Georgia and ends at the top of Mount
Katahdin at Baxter State Park in Maine. We estimate that the entire hike will
take us about 6 months. Yes, we are doing this together.

There is quite a bit of history about the trail online. You can read about it HERE.

The most frequent FIRST question we get asked about the trail is, “Where do you sleep?”

Every 8 – 10 miles along the entire length of the trail are shelters (262 of them to be exact). Most of the shelters are three sided structures the size of a one-car garage in which 6-8 people can fit inside. They have a roof, floor and usually house mice. These shelters can get crowded. (SURPRISE! We aren’t the only ones crazy enough to do this.)

We will also be carrying a 2-person tent. We have split the weight between us. Russ has the

tent and footprint and I have the tent poles. This will be our option for
shelter when we don’t want to stay in the provided shelter if the shelter is too
crowded or we want to camp elsewhere along the trail.

We are going to THRU-hike the trail. This means we will hike from one end to the other in one calendar year. The alternate would be to section hike the trail, meaning we would bite off one piece, be it big or small, at a time over a number of years. We are looking forward to starting and finishing this endeavor THIS YEAR. (positivity right?)

THE ODDS: The odds are not in our favor. Legend has it that one in every four hikers attempting "thru-hiker" status will make it all the way from Springer (GA) to Katahdin (ME). Hiking as a couple isn't going to make it any easier for us. But the odds have improved over the past few years to almost 30%, so we plan on improving the numbers in 2017. We have a few more attributes in our favor but thats for another post.

We know you probably have a bunch of questions. We are going to try to answer them over the next few posts and if you have one in particular please leave it in the comment section and we will try to answer it.

Betsy

This is us.

Hi. Welcome to our blog!

We are Russ and Betsy Bevis. Married, 30-something, DINKS who have decided to throw convention and "the standard life plan" into the wind. We have quit our jobs and we are going to pursue our life long goal to thru-hike the Appalachian trail in 2017.

That statement usually leads to about a billion questions (huh, when, why, where and how) but we are going to back up a few paces and tell you a little bit about ourselves and then get into all your burning questions in our next few entries.

HIGHLIGHTS (<- first Hamilton reference of the blog)
Russ Bevis - husband, Mechanical Engineer by education, and Mr. Can-do-anything by lifestyle. Russ grew up in Burke County, NC and has loved the outdoors since he was a child. He was outdoors skateboarding with neighborhood friends, entrepreneuring lawn maintenance and power kites with his best friend, fly fishing, soccer, camping, boy scouts and driving jeeps into mud holes, but maybe not in that exact order.

Betsy Bevis - wife, graphic communicator by education and risk taker by default. Betsy grew up in Lancaster, SC and also loved the outdoors as a child. She spent her time in forts her dad built in the surrounding woods around her home, making mud pies in the stream at the end of the driveway at the mountain house, girl scouts, soccer, lifeguarding, and driving as fast as possible with the windows down. The latter never ended up well but she has slowed down... a little bit.

As individual people we are pretty great but together we make an amazing duo. We met at the end of our sophomore year at Clemson University. (GO TIGERS!) We started dating and knew we had a lot in common from the beginning. Car camping and tubing were on the list of adventures that first summer together. Later, we signed up to take a Backpacking leisure skills class together the following semester. That's when we realized we found something great in the woods.

After the class, we decided to complete the foothills trail and drive around North and South Carolina hiking to every waterfall we could find. Our friends thought it was a bit strange when I received a backpack as an anniversary present from Russ, but my love and excitement over it proved that it was the best present ever. We then started planning our next adventure.

Six years later, we were married in the fall on the side of a mountain. We wouldn't have had it any other way. We have skied Western NC, hiked red rock canyon NV and picnicked in the Grand Canyon. We rode horses in Jackson Hole, fly fished the snake river and hiked around the Grand Tetons. We have spent numerous weekends at the National Whitewater Center in Charlotte and have run from Chattanooga TN to Nashville on a Ragnar relay team of 12 for 200 miles. We have accomplished so much but know that we have so much more to do.

We have decided to that our next adventure will be to hike the Appalachian trail, 2190.3 miles, from Georgia to Maine this year and we couldn't be more excited.