Blogs from West Virginia, United States, North America - page 10

3 Class V rapids 6 Class IV rapids and a but load of Class II and III. Sissys stay home. The boys took it on and had a blast. That said I was scared #$%less. Photos will have to be posted after the trip as they are on a waterproof camera but we jumped from cliffs. floated the river (intentionally) and paddled until we couldn't do it anymore. One thing that does motivate you is ROCKS. Big rocks and when your guide say swim left if you fall out on this rapids because on the right they call it "meat grinder" and they don't go in after you. I found out afterwards. He wasn't kidding. The Rivermen were great. Of 4 boats the only person who fell out was our guide during a class V. I ... read more

Hello All. CC and I will be returning to the trail on or about 1 May for the remaining 1,164 miles to Mt Katahdin, Maine. I will be doing my normal Blogging and will try to get the pictures in from last year before we start. This year we will be adding one piece of gear you will find interesting. It is a SPOT device. You will be able to track us daily on a Google Earth map. I will post the link here once we have the device up and running. I will send our location at lunch time and the end of every day we are on the trail. Hope everyone's winter went well and both of us are excited to finish this last leg of our trek.... read more

i used to want a stainless steel refrigerator. now i live in a big albeit aluminum refrigerator/freezer, with a STRONG emphasis on FREEZER!!!! last night in yet another fit of brilliance i stayed in my new home without turning on my gas heat(saving $ of course). thus far my tiny electric heater has worked just fine. but when the mercury plummeted, it was below 0 F or below -17 C, my trailer became one huge freezer. i left water out to freeze and it did not disappoint(i'm just glad my guiness didn't explode). tonight i will bring a heavier blanket as the forecast is for this arctic cold front to continue. wish me luck and warmth as i wish all my friends in alaska, and today in chicago too. can you say burrrrrrr?... read more

oh crap, i left southern africa for the netherlands on the 14th of december. it was cold, dark and dreary. oh man i am not ready for winter yet. i had a difficult time motivating myself to leave the comforts of the home of my new friends, roel and monique(we met in mozambique), that kindly welcomed me into there abode. however, i did manage it a couple of days as i took the ubiquitous bicycle out for country/city tours(yes it is plural). not to worry, i didn't smoke-drink (kinda like drink-drive). despite the dreariness of the weather the netherlands is a lovely country. on the 18th, i happened to be channel surfing and saw that a snow storm was forecast for the detroit airport on the 19th. double oh crap, as my flight to detroit was ... read more

We woke to two inches of snow and more coming down! Maybe we won't have Thanksgiving since it looks like it's Christmas already! Rich fixed his breakfast surprise recipe for all of us. It is eggs and cheese and a surprise! After breakfast, we went to the camper to get ready to leave and we couldn't get the slide to go in because it had too much snow on top! We had to borrow a ladder and a push broom and Rich climbed up to push the snow off! Our goodbyes said, we headed out a little before noon. The road was wet, but not snowy. A nearby house had a big backhoe in the field. It had a huge jackhammer on the end, used to break up the bedrock to enable construction. Most of the ... read more