August Outdoor Blog Carnival: What's Your Dream Hike?

Welcome to the August Blog Carnival. We asked the question, "What's dream hike?" We wanted to know where it was, what all it would entail, etc. We got quite a few entries and each on just as good as the other. Have you ever thought of the Inca Trail, Crater Lake, or how about the Oregon Trail? Without further ado, here are this months Outdoor Blog Carnival Entries. Enjoy!

Food Review - Heater Meals Revisited

You've had a long day setting up camp in your front country campsite, then an all day hike up and down a mountain with about 1600ft elevation gain over rough terrain. When you return to camp you are tired and hungry and the last thing you want to think about is fixing food. That would entail either getting a fire going real well, or breaking out your Coleman Stove then prepping the food for cooking. Why do that when you can easily pull out a Heater Meal? That's exactly what we did during our camping/hiking trip a few weeks back. We spent the morning setting up camp and then went for a 6+ mile hike. When we returned, the last thing we wanted to do was cook.

Enter Heater Meals self heating meals. These things are a breeze to cook. They come with a patented self heating package that activates with water, and no you don't have to heat the water. If you remember a while back we reviewed Heater Meals: Zesty BBQ Sauce and Potatoes with Beef. This time around Robin had the Green Peppers & Steak while I had the Pasta Italiana. As I said before, these things are a breeze. The meals come complete with seasoning packets, salt and pepper packets, the right amount of water to activate the heating package, utensils for eating, and napkins.

New Knives Winner

In case you've been wondering where we've been, it has been crazy busy around here.We haven't abandoned y'all and we are sorry we haven't been posting lately. We're especially sorry that we missed Friday's Giveaway Round Up post. We know how much everyone looks forward to those. If you keep up with us on Facebook, then you know we've been neck deep in converting a bathroom into a nursery and have started the house buying process.

We've got so much stuff to get done before the appraiser comes out so we may still be hit or miss on the blog for the next couple of weeks. This week though we will have the outdoor blog carnival post up so y'all will have plenty of blogs (both new and old) to read. Also, we will make it up to you on Friday for the gear giveaway roundup.

Anyway... Remember the knives and GoGirl giveaway? Well the winner of the knives has never contacted us with an address or anything. You know what that means right? It's time to pick a new winner. We removed the initial winner from the list and let the RNG do it's thing. This time it has picked D.Nash (of My Leaky Waders fame) as the lucky winner of the Winchester Knife set. Congrats D. Nash. Send us an email to appalachiaandbeyond (at) gmail (dot) com with your address and we will get the knife set out to you as soon as possible.

Happy Trails,
Tim and Robin

Our Dream Hike

I used to think, when I first started really getting into the hiking thing, that thru-hiking the AT would be my dream hike. To some extent, it is still a dream to thru-hike it, but it seems to be a hike that I could feasibly attain at some point in my life, at least I'd like to think so anyway. I think what sold me on the idea was listening to Bill Bryson's account in "A Walk in the Woods". Yes I say listen because Robin and I listened to it a few years back during a road trip to New Orleans and back.

Image Courtesy of
http://www.imagesofanthropology.com

Seriously though, I don't think that would suffice for this post as a dream hike because it is certainly attainable, at least if I can ever get our debt reduced to zero and enough money saved to cover six months worth of recurring bills while away on the trail. Anyway, for the purpose of the Outdoor Blog Carnival Post, "What's Your Dream Hike?", ours would have to be a hike up to Machu Picchu in Peru with the Llamas. Of course the Camino de Santiago wouldn't be half bad either, but I don't think I can coax Robin to Europe, but if I walked in the door with a complete itinerary for two and all travel arranged to Cusco, Peru, she'd beat me out of the way to our packs to get them ready and out the door in a matter of hours.

Blogger Love (August Edition)

First of all, let us first say, "Happy August Everyone". With the arrival of August, we have the last two months of summer ahead of us, and hopefully a little bit of cooling down before much longer. Kids will be going back to school in the next week or so for some others still have until Labor Day. Considering it is now August and Christmas is just under 5 months away, we better enjoy what is left of the year before it's gone. :P

Being that it is August, that can only mean one thing, time for some blogger love. That's right, as we do every month, we like to say thanks to all the bloggers that we know and love because they know and love us, and of course because we have a nice little network with each other sending traffic and new readers a like back and forth to each other. We will keep it simple this month. Thanks to all of you for doing what you do, and for being who you are.