trip report: John Muir Trail, July 2018 – part 1, decision & planning

November 28, 2018.Reading time 89 minutes.

Sometimes you submit an application for a permit with a three day start window for one of the most popular trails in the United States Park system on a whim. And sometimes you’ll just win that golden ticket on the first try. That’s the short story of how I took a long unpaid leave in the summer of 2018 and spent it walking through the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

This is part 1 of my John Muir Trail (JMT) trip report series. You can navigate to the other parts in the index below.

trip report: Busan, South Korea, June 2018

November 12, 2018.Reading time 31 minutes.

I can’t say that South Korea was high on my list of places to visit. However, when your buddy is getting married there, it’s a good opportunity to visit. While I only had a few days to experience the southern city of Busan and even less time being able to spend it with my good friend Dongil, it is a place worth visiting for the food, beach, and hiking.

trip report: Singapore, June 2018

October 25, 2018.Reading time 22 minutes.

Singapore is well known in the travel blog and travel hack community, though mostly for its award winning airport. That’s how I knew Singapore having spent a couple of nights laying over there a few years back. It wasn’t a place I’d intended to visit, but work brought me there anyways. With the surprisingly popular movie Crazy Rich Asians (imdb) providing a full on commercial account of the city and the world’s longest nonstop flight between Newark and Singapore restarting (thepointsguy), I figure I’d provide my experiences there.

trip report: Wales, May 2018

October 5, 2018.Reading time 66 minutes.

The origin of our trip to Wales was open ended, so much so that we didn’t know Wales was our destination until a couple weeks out. This trip serves as an example of an unplanned road trip that’s a culmination of cheap flights across the pond, an expiring travel voucher, and no time to plan. The end result was cliffs, rocks, castles, and fish and chips.

equipment guide: footwear

February 20, 2018.Reading time 14 minutes.

On this website, I have yet dedicated any posts on just discussing the equipment we use. My equipment page at the time I’m writing this is in pretty disrepair and with this series of posts, I’ll go back and work on it with the affiliated links (guess I should try to monetize this site like all the spam out there tells me to do).

I thought it would be good to start breaking down the major necessities that are required for backpacking, which are backpack, shelter, sleeping system, equipment for sustenance, and shoes. This series will be based on our experiences and will generally be for beginners looking to get into hiking and backpacking. The page for our current load out will be added in the future and the reviews of our current footwear can be found here.