Good afternoon everyone, and greetings from Traverse City, MI.  It is great to be back in Michigan, with enough time to reflect, rejuvenate, and discern my next few steps in life.
On September 18, 2009, I summitted the final mountain along the 2,178.3 mile range of the Appalachian Trail.  The day was long, windy, rainy, [...]

Ben has finished the trail, is headed home on the Amtrak, and is doing well!  Due to foul weather on Mt Katahdin Ben’s phone and camera are not working (hopefully temporarily) and we are therefore temporarily unable to update the journal for his final entry.  Please check back soon for the journal post, photos and [...]

Good afternoon everyone from White Cap Mountain in Maine’s “100 Mile Wilderness”. 
Well here it is, my final week on the Appalachian Trail…a time that I never thought would come. It seems like yesterday that Dave and Joey dropped me off at Springer Mountain in Georgia. Just incredible.
Well, this past week has been full of great [...]

Good afternoon everyone, and greetings from the gorgeous state of Maine! I’ve finally made it across my last state line…what a milestone.
I first would like to apologize for the time lapse since my last journal entry, cell reception has gotten very spotty up in these backwoods.
Goodness- so much has happened in the past few weeks! [...]

Hello All,
This is Nate, PennyBen’s brother, here.  I have recently returned from a quick visit to Vermont to see Ben and wanted to make a post offering a visitor’s perspective to a couple of days on the trail.  Please understand I had the Hollywood version of his trials and efforts as I never slept on [...]

Good morning and greetings from Hanover, NH– home of Dartmouth College.
I am now hiking through my second to last state of the Appalachian Trail…pretty exciting! As of this very moment, the sun is out and it’s not raining. This is a very nice respite from the three days of down-pour that I just came out [...]

I hope all is well for everyone in these dog days of summer.
I’ve hiked into New England, and am currently just outside of Lee, MA…about 1540 miles into the hike. That leaves only 640 more to trek out! Not too shabby.
New York was a gorgeous state to hike through, as was Connecticut. [...]

Hey everyone!
The last time I wrote, I was just getting ready to leave Pennsylvania and head into New Jersey. Well, now I am out of New Jersey and into New York for the next 80 or so miles.
New Jersey certainly was a rainy state, I think it rained quite hard every day that I was [...]

Hello everyone from Palmerton, PA!
Well, not much new has happened out here on the trail…I’m still hiking over rock after rock here in the great state of Pennsylvania. In just a couple days, however, I’ll be crossing the state line into New Jersey. Crossing into a new state has got to be one of the [...]

Greetings from mile post 1,137!
I hope this reaches everyone in good spirits and great weather! Life on the AT this past week has been packed.
Early last week I hiked up into the northern most terminus of Virginia, and slept on the porch of a trail maintenance center with a bunch of other people, it [...]