Be a Summit Sampler, Get $500!!!

Photo Courtesy: Post®

Want to get paid to hike a mountain? Who wouldn't right? That would be the dream indeed. Well here's a chance to make a bit of "cheese" just for hiking a mountain in your area:

"In celebration of the 60th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary's ascent up Mt. Everest, Post® Grape-Nuts® is recruiting modern-day adventurers of all ages and abilities to ascend a nearby peak of their choice and distribute samples of the new Grape-Nuts® Fit cereal to any and all they meet along the way (whether it be one hiker or several dozen).  And don't worry...the selected local mountain need not be Everest-like in height or fame!

THOUSAND TRAILS ANNOUNCES GEAR UP AND CAMP SWEEPSTAKES

While we aren't RV'ers by any stretch of the imagination, Thousand Trails, home to some of the most beautiful and natural campgrounds and RV resorts across the U.S., is giving outdoor enthusiasts a chance to get out and camp with the Gear Up and Camp sweepstakes.  One lucky camper will win a free week of camping and a camping gear package, with a combined value of $1100.  Sweepstakes entrants will also be entered for a chance to win one of four second place prize packages, and one of 30 third place prize packages daily.

The sweepstakes grand prize includes a week-long camping trip for the winner at any participating Thousand Trails or Encore RV resort campground.  In addition, the winner will receive a package of camping gear, including the following: Rand McNally’s RV-specific GPS device - the  RVND™ 7720 LM; $100 gas card; Strongback Chair; Coghlan's Camper's S'mores Grill and Corn Popper; Coleman Lantern; $50 MyRVMarket.com gift certificate; Thousand Trails sweatshirt, umbrella, window cling, backpack, blanket and travel mug; and a Duck Harbor Cool Weather Sleeping bag.

Gear Giveaway - Rokit Fuel Oatmeal

Just yesterday we reviewed Rokit Fuel Oatmeal. Now that we have your taste buds all fired up and ready to go, here's your chance to try these awesome all natural oatmeals for yourself. One lucky reader of Appalachia & Beyond will receive a four pack of single serve Rokit Fuel Oatmeal. This four pack contains one of each flavor we reviewed: Cherry Almond, Stud Muffin, Pumpkin Chocolate, and Chocolate Dream.

How do you get in on this action? Simple, just use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter. It is mandatory to leave a comment in order to enter and unlock all the other extra entry options. If your on a smart phone and don't see the comment form, the it would appear that our Disqus comment platform isn't working on your phone's browser. If this is the case be sure to get to a computer and get entered. Also if you are one of those who can't leave a comment on our Disqus comment platform, let us know so we can research what's going on with that.

So here's the other info: The contest will run from 12:01am EST Tuesday, December 4, 2012 and will close at 11:59pm EST Saturday, December 8, 2012. We will pick a winner soon after the giveaway closes and will announce the winner on our Facebook page as well as on the Rafflecopter widget. So without further ado...good luck to you all.

Happy Trails,
Tim and Robin


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Kupilka Cup - Gear Review and Giveaway

Some time ago, we were sent a Kupilka Cup by Sport Hansa to review on our blog. This is a sweet little cup. It actually reminds me of one of those ladles you see in in movies scenes that take place in a Russian Gulag. Perfect for dipping into gruel or in our case stew. You could actually put stew into this cup or my personal favorite, coffee.

The Kupilka Cup is made of a thermoplastic natural fiber composite biomaterial consisting of 50% pine wood fibers and 50% plastic materials. This makes for a durable and engraveable cup that doesn't absorb smells and is insensitive to humidity. Additionally, it has a higher heat endurance which I find quite useful as I can hold the cup in my palms after it's been filled with pipping hot coffee or warm soup without it burning my hands.

Gear Giveaway - Space Bag® Dual-Use Bags

Remember the little P.S. at the end of yesterday's post (The Space Bag® Dual-Use Bags review)? Well here it is, in the...hrm, I don't suppose it would be appropriate to say "in the flesh" considering this is just a blog post. So here it is, the giveaway, as promised. One lucky winner will receive 1 large and 1 medium Space Bag® Dual-Use Bag. Here are the details.

Duraflame® Campfire Roasting Logs™ Giveaway

We've been pretty busy the past couple of weeks. Add in the hot weather keeping us mostly indoors and that is why you haven't really heard much out of us. We just finished up with a yard sale this past weekend so unless you want a post about that (we put our old junk stuff in the yard and people bought our old junk stuff) or about our time out at our Aunt Patty's pool, then I guess a good giveaway will have to do. :P

Coolest Camper Ever Contest Reminder

We've had a wonderful Blogiversary celebration over the last couple of weeks, complete with sweet giveaways and several winners of those packages. We will get those out in the next few days so be on the look out for your prizes. For our fans and readers who didn't win, we're sorry but thank you so much for your loyalty and for participating, if not for you guys we wouldn't have a reason to do this as much as we do and for that a big THANK YOU to you all. And since you all love a good giveaway, we would like to remind everyone of the current Coolest Camper Ever contest that is still open at Sylvan Sport.

Five Year Blogiversary Giveaway Day 5 (Miscellaneous)

Welcome to the final day of our 5 Year Blogiversary Celebration. Today is "Miscellaneous" day and we've got a great package for everyone out there. There's a few different items that can suit just about anyone. We want to thank today's sponsors, Bass Pro Shops and Cobrabraid for supplying the main prizes in today's giveaway. You never know there might be a couple other prizes to go along with it. So who's going to win this package?

Five Year Blogiversary Giveaway Day 4 (Runner)

Welcome to Day 4 of our 5 Year Blogiversary Celebration. Today is "Runner" day and we've got a great package for the runners out there. Whether it's out on the road or trail, or after the run, these items are sure to come in handy. We want to thank today's sponsors, Headsweats and Hyland's Homeopathy, for supplying the prizes in today's giveaway. So who's going to run away with this package?

Five Year Blogiversary Giveaway Day 3 (Survival)

Welcome to Day 3 of our 5 Year Blogiversary Celebration. Today is survival day and we've got a couple tools that will definitely come in handy when out in the backcountry, camping, or if you find your self in a sticky situation. We want to thank today's sponsors, Cobrabraid and COAST Products, for supplying the prizes in today's giveaway. Let's get to the package details shall we?

Five Year Blogiversary Giveaway Day 2 (Food)

Welcome everyone to Day 2 of our Blogiversary Giveaways. Today we are thinking about food and how good it is after a tough day hiking, backpacking, or even camping. We have a few great food items which are perfect for the pack or while camping. A special thanks goes out to Hungry Hikers and Vasque Footwear for sponsoring today's prizes. What's up for grabs you ask? Well let's get to it.

Five Year Blogiversary Giveaway Day 1 (Hiker)

Happy 5 Year Blogiversary to Appalachia & Beyond. We hope everyone is just as excited about this as we are. We've been anxiously waiting for this day to get here. As you all know we have decided to have 5 full days of giveaways just to celebrate the occasion. Also, just to be clear, you have a full week to enter on each day's giveaway starting on the day of each giveaway (e.g. Monday's giveaway will stay open until Sunday, Tuesday's until Monday, etc.).

Getting Ready For A Celebration

In less than two weeks time we will have our 5 year blogiversary. Of course it didn't start out as Appalachia & Beyond, it started out at Robin & Tim's Outdoor Adventures, or something like that. It was back in 2010 that we changed it to Appalachia & Beyond and gave it all a nice make over, but I digress...

Sylvan Sport Contest Announcement

Image Courtesy:
SylvanSport

The very kind folks at SylvanSport (makers of the SylvanSport Go) asked us if we would help spread the word about their big contest this year. Of course how could we turn that down. The SylvanSport Go is a pretty sweet looking trailer/camper combo, and to beat all, SylvanSport is a great outdoor company located just a hop, skip, and a jump across the Blue Ridge from us in Brevard, NC.

If you remember they had the "Find The Go" contest last year and the year previous. Every few days they'd release a new set of coordinates to narrow down to the area the Go was located, along with a clue. At the end of 8 sets of clues they finally had one last set of coordinates and the clue, the first person to find it, won it. Last year it was somewhere in San Francisco. Unfortunately for us, there was no way to get out that far. This year though, the contest is different and is pretty much up for grabs for anyone. So here are all they details they asked us to share.

We Have a Winner (5.11 Tactical ATAC A2 Flashlight)

Happy April everyone. We know that y'all have been waiting with nervous anticipation to find out who gets to add the spiffy ATAC A2 flashlight from 5.11 Tactical to their packs. Well ladies and gentlemen, wait no longer. We do have a winner and to beat it all Dinah helped me pick the winner when we logged into the Random Number Generator and input the numbers for the entries.

So without further ado, the lucky winner of the ATAC A2 flashlight from 5.11 Tactical is none other than Jeff of the blog AppalachianHikerHQ. Jeff, when you see this send us an email at appalachiaandbeyond (at) gmail (dot) com with your mailing address and we will send it along so 5.11 can get you your new flashlight. Let us know how it does out on the trail.

Okay everyone, that's about all the time we have for this evening. It's time to go wolf down supper before the Bug wakes up from her nap. Stay tuned as we have a pretty cool contest announcement post for tomorrow from a company located here in the Southern Appalachians and we are happy to help spread the word.

Happy Trails,
Tim and Robin

Early Celebration Giveaway(5.11 Tactical Flashlight)

Wow it's already spring and well it's one of our favorite times of year to be out on the trail and/or camping. We've been at this blogging business for a while now and well this year is a bit different. You know this May we will be celebrating five years of blogging, trail reports and destination guides here at Appalachia & Beyond. And while you can expect some cool things to celebrate the occasion, we thought with it being spring and a great time to get out on the trail or in the campgrounds, why not start celebrating a little early.

Photo Courtesy of:
5.11 Tactical

We are lucky enough to begin the celebrations for the upcoming anniversary by teaming up with 511Tactical  to give away a prize to one of our readers - and it could be you! The prize is an ATAC A2 Flashlight from 511's range of flashlights.

The ATAC A2 is simply designed to be strong, light and bright - the 2AA batteries supply 162 lumens, or just 15 lumens on 'ultra low power' mode.

Just Waiting on a Sign: FGR 12/9/2011

Well another week has come and gone and still our newest addition has decided she's not quite done yet. So we continue to anxiously await, with a certain nervous excitedness, her arrival. It won't be much longer now. Hopefully by the end of the weekend we will have the news posted somewhere, everywhere. Wouldn't that be fantastic. We like to think so, and I know you all think so too as you all wait patiently with us. Until that time though, here's something else to get all excited about...Yep that's right, another edition of the FGR. If we can't have a baby yet, let's win some gear instead.

First up is a sweet giveaway. We all love to keep our tootsies nice and toasty warm, especially on these cold winter morning, when there's frost on everything. Well for the next week, you have a chance to get entered for a prize pack of 12 pairs of Goodhew socks. That's 12 pair of their best selling socks. If you remember correctly Robin won two pair along with her Vasque Taku GTX from the Outdoor Blogger Network and even did a review on them. These are great socks, and the good folks over at The Adventure Post, will hook up one lucky winner with 12 pairs. You can enter with a comment, or tweet daily and there's another bonus entry  you can get if you say something about it on Facebook. You have until December 16th to get those comments in, so don't delay. Head over to the giveaway post for all the rest of the warm and fuzzies.

TGI FGR - 12/2/2011

Welcome to a new edition of Friday's Giveaway Roundup. We apologize for not having one the past couple of weeks. With twice a week doctors visits, the Thanksgiving Holidays, and all things baby, it's a wonder we even have time for sleep these days. Well this week isn't much different. We are at the 38 week mark as of this past Tuesday and we are just waiting for the chain reaction to start. Until then let's get you up to speed on some great gear giveaways going on in the outdoor blog-o-realm shall we?

Image Courtesy: Hiking in Finland

You are going to love this one. Earlier this week Hendrik, of the well known Hiking in Finland blog and creator of the upcoming video series Ultralight A-Z, has announced the Hiking in Finland Advent Calendar giveaway. Every day starting on December 1st, Hendrick will be giving away a piece of utlralight hiking/backpacking gear, climbing gear, or bicycling gear to 1 lucky reader per day. There will be different things you will have to do to get your name in the hat, and you can only win one prize through the 25 days of Christmas. So you will have to be very strategic as to what pieces of gear you are willing to win. Head over to  Hiking in Finland for the rest of the details on this uber-awesome giveaway.

FGR - 10/28/2011 - Who's Ready to Win Some Stuff?

Seriously, who's ready to win some stuff? There's a few great giveaways going on in the outdoor blog-o-realm so let's get right down to business shall we? First up over at Live Free and Hike New Hampshire, our buddy Karl has two copies of Following Atticus to give away to two lucky readers. It looks like these are hard back copies and they would make for a great gift for someone, or better yet a wonderful edition to your own personal library. You have until Nov. 11 before Karl picks the two lucky winners so get over to his blog for all the entry details.

Next up, Trail Sherpa has launched it's first gear review, offered by none other than our lead sherpa Tim Miner. He's reviewed the Geigerig Hydration System and in so doing has decided to celebrate the first gear review post on Trail Sherpa by giving away a Geigerig 1600 day pack with inline filter. How awesome is that? Pretty dang sweet if you ask me. Like the first giveaway mentioned, there are multiple entries available for this one, but you only have until Nov 3rd to get them in so head over to the review post and get entered now.

Why no posts??

I know what you're asking... "Hey Appalachia and Beyond! Where've you been?? Don't you do anything fun anymore?!?" Well, to be quite honest, we've been really busy with baby, and I suppose it's time for me to air out the nest a little bit. There's been quite a bit going on that we've kept to ourselves - or rather, I've made Tim keep to ourselves - mainly because I've been hoping it would clear up on it's own, blow over, go away, miraculously disappear, etc.

But now it's time to realize that it's not going to be so. Because of that, we want our readers to know that if they sense a lack of involvement on our part, it's only because we are being very diligent and involved in the health of our baby girl. There are certain things I can't do right now - and certain things Tim doesn't want to do without me because he feels the need to stick close to home in case we need him. All of this is so very new to me.