Just a quick post here to let you all know I finished yesterday! No more white blazes for me, no more 4000 to 5000 kcal diet, no more blending in while smelling like… this. So far the day after just feels like another “zero” day, but getting home will help me quickly shift gears back to civilian life.

I do want to tell one quick story while I have your attention. I read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series at an impressionable age, so of course I carried a towel with me 2200 miles just in case, a nice compact and lightweight one. It had gone unused for almost 6 months at the bottom of my dry bag. Then, on my last night camping out on “Katahdin Eve,” I thought I had sufficiently waited out the afternoon drizzle at Birches campsite and finally pitched my tent and got everything ready for the night. But the rain came back, and hard! I entered my well-intentioned but trail-weary tent after dinner to find my bed soaked, finally putting that towel to good use. Thank you, Douglas Adams! (Fun fact: I hitchhiked zero times on the AT, almost unheard of!)

I’m looking forward to posting some other interesting statistics about my hike, like total mileage (not simply the 2198.5 AT miles), daily averages, etc. Chime in if you have stats I should try to report, or any questions about my journey I can try to answer! Now to get myself home…