Dory here. Dave and I have been able to connect one way or another almost everyday since he has been gone, either by text, Facebook, WeChat, or phone calls, and that has been great. We talked this afternoon and chatted about what a challenge it is for him to post to this blog from his phone because of power issues and the whole small scale of the phone, so I agreed to grab some shots from Facebook and put them up for him. Below are a bunch of photos from the last week, when the weather was lots better than it was last time he posted here.
In general, everything is going well. Dave has been hiking for the past week with a guy named DJ from Georgia (the one on the East Coast, not the former Soviet republic) and they're pretty evenly matched. They've made very good time -- Dave is actually several days ahead of the schedule that he carefully mapped out over the course of the winter. He's happy with his gear and his feet have been fine. Today, with two and a half weeks and 10% of the trail behind him, he feels like he's found his rhythm and wakes up in the morning ready to hike. He sounds great.
You might note that Dave looks pretty much the same in all of his selfies. This is because he has the one shirt...
Some people were worried about Dave taking on the trail "by himself," but as you can see in the photo below, he has plenty of company. Check out the line up of backpacks in the background on the right.
This is not New England.
There is this phenomenon on long distance hiking routes called Trail Angels. These are people who, out of the kindness of their little hearts, do special things for the hikers. Check out this stocked dumpster with comfy sofa -- a great place to take a load off.
Itty bitty tent -- one reason that his pack is so light.
This is where Dave was hanging out when I talked with him this afternoon. It was hot and he was waiting for things to cool off before hiking some more. He had already done 16.5 miles up to this point.
I'll try to post as soon as I have more photos -- Stay tuned!
