Solvitur Ambulando

My apologies for such a long delay in writing. Melissa and I had a
great time on our bicycle tour of the northern Netherlands…see our
photos here:

http://eric.trailfaqs.com/photos/europe/netherlands/

After a whirlwind tour of the traditional kolsch and altbier brewpubs
in Cologne and Dusseldorf, an evening in a cozy London pub drinking
real ale and playing Scrabble, and a crazy day of travel involving
ridiculous security at Heathrow and a missed connection in Montreal,
we finally arrived back in the States. I spent the next few days
visiting the Lake Erie Islands and Cedar Point with my friends Cory
and Chris, then the next few weeks at my father’s place in Indiana
looking for a used Jeep Cherokee. After spending countless hours
online, making numerous phone calls, and crisscrossing the state to
actually look at the vehicles, we finally found one that was suitable.

The car search took much longer than we thought, but we hoped that
we’d still be able to drive out to Colorado in time and hike the
Colorado Trail before winter set in. So we loaded up our new Jeep and
headed west at 75 miles an hour, spending a night near Kansas City
with our hiking friend Chino on the way to Denver. We arrived early in
the afternoon, made a quick trip to the library to make photocopies
from the CT guidebook, put the Jeep into storage, had a nice dinner,
bought a short story anthology to read on the trail, and then took an
overnight bus to Durango.

The trail has been amazing so far, but it’s been surprisingly cold and
windy. Most hikers start in Denver to ease their way into the hike,
but we tackled the mountains head-on to give us a better chance of
finishing the entire trail. We both suffered from some minor altitude
sickness after spending our first three nights at 8500′, 10600′, and
11400′, but most of that is behind us now. We hope to finish the
remaining 340 miles over the next 3 weeks, retrieve our car from
storage, and start our new lives in the Fort Collins area, about an
hour north of Denver and Boulder.

Again, sorry for the long delay…keep an eye out for our amazing
Colorado pictures!

Everyone,

I’ve posted new pictures:

http://eric.trailfaqs.com/photos/europe/

Corsica was really amazing, it’s been the highlight of our trip. The
hiking was challenging, the scenery was beautiful, and the feel was
much more Mediterranean than we’d expected. The only downside was the
lack of quality groceries.

The route we’d planned to take through the Alps was highly
disappointing. We discovered the hard way that long-distance hiking
routes in Europe are designed with overnight stops in mind. This means
that you’re usually climbing uphill out of a town or refuge each
morning and descending to another each evening, which is highly
frustrating when the elevation change is 1000 meters or more and the
trail is on a road, often a paved one. It was also very hot and dry in
the area we were hiking through, and we often had to carry 3 or 4
liters of water to last us the entire day.

So we abandoned that plan after a week and took a train to Chamonix to
hike the Tour du Mont Blanc. The scenery was amazing, as might be
expected, but the crowds were almost more than we could bear. Melissa
got stepped on and kicked by a tour group at one of the major passes,
if that’s any indication.

So we’ve given up all hope of enjoying further hiking in Europe and
have shifted gears. We’ve spent some time in Paris and Brussels, and
we’re now in Amsterdam about to depart on a two-week bicycle tour
around the Netherlands. I did something similar to this in 2000 and
really enjoyed it, so I’m hoping the two of us will find this ride
just as rewarding.

We’ve also decided to move our return flight up to August 18th, and
plan to do some canoeing in the Boundary Waters and/or hike the
Colorado Trail before we stop adventuring. I’ll send out another
update once we’re back in the States.

My girlfriend Melissa and I have been traveling in Europe for nearly a month now. After spending a few nights in London getting over our jet lag, we hiked the 256-mile Pennine Way in England, getting thoroughly soaked on an almost daily basis. I’ve just finished hiking from Glasgow to Inverness on the West Highland Way and the Great Glen Way, while Melissa has been volunteering on an organic farm in the Scottish Borders…we’ll be reunited in Edinburgh on the 18th once I’ve walked the 212-mile Southern Upland Way.

Our plan for the rest of the summer is to hike the 110-mile GR20 in Corsica and then a 1350-mile route through the Alps from Monaco to Trieste that will take up all of July, August, September, and maybe then some. I won’t be sending out many updates while we’re here, but I will try to upload photos to my website when possible.

Our flight back to the States is on October 10th. We haven’t decided where we’ll be relocating upon our return, but San Francisco is probably the leading candidate at this point.