Day One

Hello Everyone,

This is Kelsey using this blog as a way for everyone to stay connected with Shawn's adventure. I hope to update it after every conversation with him. I'll encourage him to post on this when he has internet access so that you can hear his stories and updates straight from him, until then I hope this suffices as a way to know how he's doing.

Shawn officially departed Winchester, MA for the Appalachian Trail thru hike on Tuesday, March 4th. He flew in to Atlanta, GA, took a Greyhound bus to a town that I currently cannot recollect, and then spent in the night at Motel 6. For anyone who has read Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, apparently it is true that this particular motel has cigarette burns on the toilet seats. Shawn also said that he wore his sandals into the shower, for fear of catching a disease from the bottom of the shower floor.

This morning Shawn was up around 7AM to re-pack his pack, take his last shower in civilization for a while and head to Amicalola Falls. He took a cab to the falls, which took about an hour, and was ready to depart around 11AM. At 12:40PM, I got another call from him saying that he had eaten breakfast/lunch at a restaurant about a mile down the trail and was ready to set out for good. He said that he was surprised by the number of well-dressed business people that had ventured to this particular restaurant for lunch, considering it was in near absolutely nothing but the AT.

He told me there was a small chance he could call from the top of Springer Mtn (the official start of the AT), but that we should say our goodbyes from the lodge. He said that I should expect to hear from him again on Saturday or Sunday. He also said that after one mile on the trail he was thoroughly enjoying himself but was already regretting the heaviness of his pack.

To my surprise, I did get a call from him around 7PM tonight! He had reached the top of Springer Mtn and was ready for bed. He said that the trail leading to the AT had been much easier than he expected, but that his shoulders and back hurt from the weight of the pack. He also said that he knew it would get easier with time. He walked 8.9 miles today. He told me that he was so happy to be out there in GA on the AT, that the weather was perfect and he had just watched the sunset from the summit of the mountain. I asked him what he was having for dinner, and he said that he was too tired to cook, so it would probably just be peanut butter and crackers or tuna and crackers. In the end, it was a couple of handfuls of pretzels. He called about an hour later to say that he was ready for bed. We'll be talking again in the morning before he departs on the official trail. And he did say that he's already taken a few pictures of his journey.

Please let me know if you have any questions or anything in particular you would like to ask him, or if he hasn't called you in a while and he promised he would. I promise to send any messages his way. We're also keeping track of his pace and routine so that I can begin to estimate when he will be arriving in towns. At that point, I have a list of all of the post offices in the area, so please let me know if you would like to know specifically where he is so that I can give you the appropriate address and make sure he goes to the post office.

If there's anything else I can help with, please let me know, but I'm sure that Shawn will be in touch with all of you as soon as he can.

Thanks,
Kelsey