Written by: Brandon “Monkey” Imp I had this big plan. It was going to be perfect. I would graduate early from Cornell, hike the Appalachian Trail while applying to medical school, teach English abroad during my gap year, and enroll in a top medical school in 2011. Well, I did graduate early and I am [...]

Written by: Brandon “Monkey” Imp Are we in the final stretch? We are in Kent, CT. The remaining states to hike through are CT, MA, VT, NH, and ME. CT and MA will probably fly by – the mileage length is low and the terrain is non-White Mountains. Then there’s VT and NH where our [...]

Written by: Brandon “Monkey” Imp First, a sincere apology to all of the readers out there. Our blog has been very dry the past few weeks due to unexpected events – namely, a lack of internet usage in towns! It is as if every time we entered a town, the library was closing earlier than [...]

Written by Brandon “Monkey” Imp   …plays in my mind over and over and over (and I love it).  Since returning to the trail, we have met a whole slew of new hikers.  Two of them are Ivy and Mischief.  They are my age (22), go to separate colleges, and have been dating for five [...]

Written by: Brandon “Monkey” Imp It’s something everybody has dealt with in their life – you miss your family and friends. The separation could be for any number of reasons. You went off to college, studied abroad for a semester, went on a long trip, or one of you moved permanent residence. Some identify the [...]

Written by: Brandon “Monkey” Imp Ringleader and I travelled to her Law School graduation this past weekend while Lightning ran around at Trail Days. Dozens of people approached the two of us to talk about the trail – classmates, professors, deans, the works. One fact was widely unrecognized: we travel as a group but hike [...]

Written by: Brandon “Monkey” Imp We are one week away from our 2 month trail anniversary, and I’ve decided the time has come to introduce our thru-hiker friends! There are major drop-out points that we have already passed (Neels Gap, Franklin, the Smokies, Damascus). The last one is the state of Virginia in its entirety [...]

Written by: Brandon “Monkey” Imp To me, hiking the Appalachian Trail is hard! I never thought it would be easy. I never thought it would be a walk in the park or a vacation. It is a lifestyle, and it takes energy to maintain the lifestyle. I have to watch every step I take and [...]

Written by: Brandon “Monkey” Imp First, a promised shout out to Troop 99 from North Carolina – hope you finished your 50 miler with flying colors! We are now in Erwin, TN, somewhere around 350 miles into our hike. April 10th was our one-month anniversary and yesterday was Lightning’s birthday, so we splurged on a [...]

Written by: Brandon “Monkey” Imp My last blog entry was about some of the worst days on the trail. As the title indicates, here is the turnaround. I have written an “entry” in my journal only once thus far, and I am sharing it with you. (I’ll try to clean up the grammar a bit [...]