Miles: 0 Steps: 6,208 Vertical gain: 0 feet Liquid consumed: 140 oz. Wildlife: Lots of humans at the Gathering Faith in Humanity: met so make good people and reconnected with a bunch of others. I’m usually all about watching presentations, especially about thru hiking and travel, but you know what? On a trip like Walk The Parks I spend A LOT of time alone, staring straight ahead and listening. With so many people here, I want to interact! To chat! Even though the vast majority were focused on the presentations there were always a couple hanging out outside. That’s mostly where I was. Met so many cool people, new and old: SWC: 70 year old who just completed his triple crown, and a great guy. Bruiser: someone I met hiking in 2009. We got along really well. Legend: did a calendar triple crown last year, was named legend for doing some good trail magic, not because he’s a badass Hiker. He inspired me a bit to do my trip even though I never met him. Really liked Legend Clay/Woodward: hiked together on the AT in 2007, haven’t seen him since. Now he’s really involved with the Idaho Centennial Trail which is awesome. Great guy! Ben: Clays friend who’s a professional photographer. Really cool guy to talk to! Marni and Nimbles: Marni owned a hostel on the AT that I stayed at in 2015. She’s super cool and it was great to see her. Nimbles is her son and I met him at VVR last year on the PCT. Great to see him again. Worldwide and Yogi: these 2 wrote significant planning/guide books. I met worldwide once last year at Casa de Luna. I really get along well with him: he talks more than me and I love it! Yogi is cool too! She carries a fairly heavy pack and we shared the same experiences of meeting some hikers and all they can do is critically analyze your gear instead of talking about something interesting. Haha, so is life... Goat: Triple crowners from Turkey, world traveler, great guy to talk to as well. Mike and Naomi: couple who both have an incredible hiking resume! Meghan/Malissa: super sweet employees of the venue, so much hospitality, thank you! Wow there are so many more too but I don’t want to write more right now, haha It was incredibly inspirational to see so many hikers receive a Triple Crown award. This means that they hiked the AT, PCT, AND CDT! That’s over 9,000 miles of hiking and that’s incredibly impressive! Sure it’s fairly obscure, but just think of how determined you have to be to walk that far. If you average 20 miles per day, that’s over 450 days of hiking to reach the Triple Crown! Even crazier is that most of the people in attendance do so much more too: more hiking, more traveling, most are very intelligent, etc. amazing to be part of such a cool community! Inspiring inspiring inspiring! So of course I stayed up pretty late conversing and having fun!