Jenny and Erin

If you’ve been reading Jenny-and-Erin this last month you know that Erin and I have accepted a dare to walk 15 of Minnesota’s 19 state trails by November. Let me begin by saying we are not a long distance walkers…yet. The longest I’ve walked in a day was 13 miles and that was because I got lost. By the time I arrived at my destination, completely wiped out, my boyfriend had started driving around looking for me. Oops. So, while I’m still not actually sure why we accepted this dare (okay, a little wine, a nice dinner and a lot of laughing were involved), we will find a way to do it. Erin and I aren’t exactly known for backing down from a challenge. Between you and me though (Erin, close your eyes for this) I’m more than a little overwhelmed and have yet to decide whether this entire thing makes any sense. Have we bit off more than we can chew?

Why are we walking only 15 of the 19 trails you may be wondering? We’re pretty crafty negotiators. After a little stalling and a quick glance at the trails we negotiated dropping 4 of them, each of which are each longer than 125 miles. With these huge trails off our list, we are still up against a very daunting task – the remaining trails total 554 miles.

The endurance portion of this challenge is key, and not just in terms of walking. Most of the trails are not close to where we live, a few requiring driving 5 hours just getting there. And after the drive there won’t be time for messing around. Nope. Straight to walking we go! Some days we will be walking over 20 miles a day, and a few of these with backpacks on. Three of the trails require backpacking for a week. Erin’s a camper, I am not. I like hot baths, air conditioning, beds with lots of pillows and toilets that flush. Instead I’ll be lying on the ground (after walking 20 miles remember), without a shower and surrounded by wild animals. Lovely. In my defense I follow a strict policy of no complaining once I’ve committed, ask Erin.

Okay, enough of the stuff that I’m not going to like, here’s what I’m excited about. My biggest excitement is the accomplishment. The very act of walking all of these trails, completing the dare and sucking up the parts I don’t like (camping, being sweaty and dirty and did I mention snakes?) will be life-changing. I am excited to see the beautiful scenery (one trail for instance has us walking through waterfalls), having time to think away from cities and getting in much better shape. Oh, and a nice tan and sun-streaked hair. My biggest hope is that this will be similar to other traveling I’ve done where we’ll meet a variety of interesting people on the trails and maybe walk with them for a day or two as company. And maybe have a few marshmallows over the fire. That is if they’re not deemed to heavy to carry. Well, Erin?

This week we are finalizing the details, making arrangements to be gone for lots of long weekends and a couple of entire weeks, finding people to watch pets, explaining to loved ones one more time why we’re going to be gone nearly every weekend, etc. Who knows, maybe friends and family will even join us on some of the shorter segments? Either way, we’ll keep you updated on our progress; what we’ve seen, where we walked and most importantly what we learn. Oh, and if you are hikers or campers and have any advice it’d be great if you sent it our way, either via a comment or email me directly at jenny@jenny-and-erin.com.

Wish us luck and good weather! Oh, and you can check our progress on the sidebar.

This entry was posted in Boots are Made for Walkin on Monday, April 23rd, 2007 by Jenny. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.