Friday, May 7, 2010

Bucket List & All Star List

Sorry, no pictures this time. So there I was sitting at my work computer on a very slow night, trying to think of something to do. Then I started thinking about hiking. Then I started thinking about all the hikes I wanna do some day. BAM! I'll make a bucket list. I thought it would take me all night. There are so many hikes out there I just gotta do before I kick the bucket. Well, after about 30 minutes I was done. This is in part because of two things: one, there are certain hikes that are always on my mind, so those got jotted down in no time (i.e. the Grand Canyon, John Muir Trail), and two, all the other ones that I read about in Backpacker Magazine or elsewhere on the internet were fleeting my mind.

So with that done, I decided to get a little more creative. I decided to make a list of all 50 states, then list one, and ONLY one, hike in each state that I would like to do. Now, some states simply don't offer any decent hiking, so I decided that other outdoor activities qualified. For example, in a lot of the coastal states, I have paddling trips, and in some of the flatter mid-west states I have bike trips. I tried to mix it up a bit. Now, it's not necessarily meant to be the "best" hike in each state, just a good one. Some states were nearly impossible to narrow down to one hike, like California and Washington, and some states were nearly impossible to find anything in at all, like Kansas and Nebraska. But, alas, the list is done.

I'd love to get some input from other folks on what they think would be a good addition to either of these lists. If you know of an awesome trail in Wisconsin (or paddle or bike ride), let me know and I will take it into consideration. Now, if I can knock out about five of these trips a year, it should only take me a mere ten years to finish the list. I'll keep you posted!

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