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Egypt: Day Zero

We have less than 3 hours before we land in Cairo, Egypt.. and I have hardly slept a wink. I just haven’t been able to get comfortable on planes lately, and that’s beyond frustrating. So, I figured I’d type this out for y’all instead of getting more irritated that I can’t fall asleep and stay that way.

Mom was so surprised at her birthday dinner, everything went mostly as planned. My best friends, Lauren, Sarah, and Brittany helped me. Brit got me from the airport and I got ready at her house. She also got the balloons and flowers for mom for me, AND she baked her a cake that everyone loved!


Lauren met us at Brit’s house and Sarah and her husband Kyle met us at the restaurant. We all hid until Mom, Uncle Keith, Aunt Kathy, Michael, Aunt Shannon, and Uncle Robert were seated. Then, Sarah and Kyle walked up, pretending like they just happened to be there and saw everyone.. as they were chatting, we followed.

Mom was so shocked! It was an absolute blast!
I spent the next couple weeks at home, catching up and seeing friends and family. I got my favorite Italian food-better than I remember.. and then on 10/30, Andrea and her mom, Terri flew in. They stayed the night and the following afternoon we were back at the airport, flying to JFK in New York City.


We landed at 6:30pm and made our way to the TWA hotel.. a really cool hotel with so much architectural beauty. It’s decorated in the 50s style and is based off of Trans World Airlines, an airline from back then. They even have one of the old planes, “The Connie” out back that you can walk into and have extremely overpriced drinks at. The whole concept is really cool. I will say-the rooms were nothing special, I think the La Quinta Inn that Marquis called bougie back in California was technically nicer than this room, had more amenities, and was quite literally $300 less per night. Anyway.


We unloaded our luggage and went exploring the hotel. We didn’t have a drink in the Connie-because they were $22 for a glass of wine, and I was wanting an espresso martini-which they didn’t have the ingredients for. Bummer. I’d have paid a stupid amount for one, just because. But, no none else in our group was feeling it either-all of us were exhausted, especially Andrea and Terri-they’ve had to do a ton of traveling in the last several days.


We went to the restaurant at the hotel and immediately regretted it. The menu had $40 chicken breasts and $31 fish and chips. No one came over within the 10 minutes we sat and looked over everything, so, it was a sign it wasn’t meant to be. We ended up eating downstairs in the hotel’s “food hall.” We got paninis and fries and were all left somewhat disappointed. Oh well. What can you do? I really pray our Egypt accommodations and meals aren’t as lackluster as this has been.


I didn’t sleep well, although the bed and pillows were very comfortable. I think I’m just too exited to get to Cairo and see what’s in store for us. We got to our gate early, had some Starbucks, and waited around. Once we boarded and got up in the air-we were served a dinner plate. Yall! It was better than anything I’ve eaten in the last 24 hours! I’m legitimately impressed! Maybe they’ll feed us “breakfast” before we land. One can hope.

Anywho. The itinerary is roughly as follows: 17 days in Egypt: Cairo, Aswan, Nile River Cruise, Luxor, White Desert, Sharm el Sheikh. Then, Andrea and Terri head over to Paris (thank you so much Margot for the recs!) and mom and I head to Jordan.. there we’ll go to Amman, the Dead Sea, Petra, and Wadi Rum. We fly to Istanbul, Turkey together, for a short overnight, then mom flies back to Atlanta, and I fly to Mauritania.


There, I’ll ride the Iron Ore Train across the Sahara desert and also have a good solid tour of the main cities-all lasting 8ish days there, total. From Mauritania, I go to Morocco-which I have a tour there as well, but they’re currently causing some issues about getting me from the airport and getting me to the tour group-even though I’ve already paid for the airport transfer-I’m a bit anxious over it and hoping we’ll have this figured out before I get there. Fingers crossed!


From Morocco I spend 3 nights in Lisbon, Portugal before flying home the night before my birthday. I think this is going to be an incredible trip-though I don’t know if any trip can top the one mom and I took last year to Europe. I don’t mind trying to find one to top it though! Ha!


Alright. That’s about all the rambling I can do for now. We land at a silly time, like 3 or 4am in Cairo-soooo-I’m a bit anxious about our guide being there and then having something for us to do until normal hours. He mentioned hanging out and relaxing at the pool until we can check in, knowing today will be a recovery day-I guess we’ll find out! See ya later!

PCT Day 6

Start: 1433.9

Stop: 1445.4

Today’s miles: 11.5

Total PCT miles: 64.3

I had big plans for today. I was going to wake up early, crush this snow, make some miles, be brave! Damn, I’m funny. If only I knew what today had in store for me.


I actually slept incredibly well on my slanted spot near all the snow. Especially for being so paranoid once it got dark.. I drifted off before 10pm and woke up a little after midnight to the sound of rain tap tap tapping on my tent.. when I woke up for this rain-my face was smooshed into the mesh side panels of my tent. Like so smooshed it took me a second to realize why I couldn’t open my eyes! And I had drool everywhere! LOL I guess my sleeping pad slid a little during those two hours and I was just knocked out cold. Worth it.


I quickly checked and made sure everything was dry (I’ve never had an issue with this tent, except for the condensation in the mornings from my hot breath all night, but I’m still paranoid after that one tent I had on the AT allowed a little river to come right through the middle of it.). I was back to sleep the second my face was back down, although I did scoot the pad back to where it should have been.


My watch alarm vibrated at 5:30. I actually giggled. Yeah right am I getting up at 5:30 in the wet, damp morning when the birds aren’t even up yet! I took my synthroid and fell back to sleep. An hour later, I finally got moving-but slowly. It was cold. Not like freezing cold, but definitely like I want to eat my oatmeal snuggled in my quilt cold. So I got up, got my food bag (I also peed & cleaned my hands), and came back to bed to make my oatmeal and coffee.


I was finally packed and on snow-I mean trail by 7:40. I had my microspikes on and made my way through the not so fluffy white stuff. I ended up taking them off after maybe 30 minutes in them. Everything I was crossing, while frequent, wasn’t hard to balance on as long as I used my trekking poles.. and when I did get back to solid ground, the microspikes hurt my feet a little. So, I took them off and at times felt like I was skating and other times I thought to myself I am an absolute moron and should have left them on.


It was slow moving, a lot of the snow underneath the massive piles I was walking on had started melting and making little streams, it was difficult at first to figure out what was safe to walk on, what definitely wasn’t, and all of the questionable variables in between. At some point I gained confidence, especially when I picked up other people’s footprints. I thanked God for them all day today, even when they led me astray.
There were many moments where I’d stop and look around, then freak myself out because I was just utterly surrounded by the snow, and if I didn’t have my app to follow or those footlprints, it would be so easy to get very very lost out here. I haven’t laid eyes on another human all day. It’s a little unnerving.


Sometime between 11-1 I went through a logging area, it looked awful and it was hard to maneuver over and around all the accidental or purposeful fallen trees. It looked like a place to buy wood chips by the truckload. But, also surrounded by snow. And no people buying or selling wood chips. Ha.


I decided to sit on one of the purposefully cut tree stumps for lunch around noon. As I was pulling out my bagel to make a sandwich, it started sprinkling. I shoved everything in (after pulling out a snack to stick in my Fanny pack-sour patch kids from Jennifer Kilgo!) put on my rain cover and got out my umbrella. Minutes after I started walking again-the sky fell out and decided to dump hail on me for a good 20-30 minutes. Thankfully there wasn’t much snow to navigate at this point.


Around 1 the rain stopped, so I found another stump. Thankfully the sun was shining again too. I ate my lunch while my tent, socks, and shoes all sat drying out in the sunshine. It wasn’t the prettiest views, but I was happy and honestly a bit proud of myself for making it through this type of terrain. I’ve never hiked through snow like this, unless you count when I walked down a black diamond ski slope in Heavenly Ski Resort because the guy told me I was “required” to ski down it. This is way different though. While that guy was a jackass, and I was being stubborn as hell, he was at the very least required to keep me safe or he’d lose his job. I’m required to keep myself safe out here, or I could lose my life. Scary shit.


Anywho. In the afternoon the trail went over some ridge lines which were stunning. On my left, I could see mostly snow free valleys covered in trees surrounded by other mountains. To my right-tons of trees sloping down into a valley surround by nothing but snow. And water. Haha, every single turn my brain was like, “please don’t go back into that yet! Please!”


I was getting frustrated at how slow I was moving. Over the day I had slipped into the snow on my butt at least 5 times, the last time post-holing and losing my shoe, making me have to shove my hand in the hole of branches and twigs to find it. As the day went on, the more likely it would be that I’d sink more and more when I walked through the white stuff.


Around 4pm, I turn a corner and see huge billowing storm clouds ahead. I keep walking and see that around that next bend, I’m back in snow. NO! I did not want to be caught in a storm in the snow with no idea when I’d get out of it again. You just don’t know, sometimes it’s less than a minute of quick walking, the next time it’s 20-30 minutes traversing a whole valley floor with seriously deep looking tree wells.


I turned around and spotted a decent-ish sort of flat spot by this chunk of snow and ice beside some trees. While I was pondering whether I should just set up shop right there, right now, and deal with all this crap tomorrow.. thunder tumbled through. Ok, noted. It was 4:13. I dropped my stuff and started setting up my tent. The thunder continued and then I could hear the wind. That was terrifying. I knew rain would be coming any second so even before I finished staking it all out correctly, I pushed my pack inside the tent, then finished feverishly working to make sure it was staked well enough in this soft ground to hopefully weather whatever storm was coming for me.


I leapt inside by 4:18, shoes off.. and at 4:21 the first rain drops started their decent. I’ve slowly started unpacking. My pad is up and my warmer clothes are on. I’m actually pretty chilled and my legs look cut to shreds thanks to the overgrown trail. I’m not hungry yet though, which is a little concerning. I am super tired, so I’m considering skipping dinner and getting some shut eye now, with the rain, and maybe I’ll sleep through anything worse coming my way. I haven’t seen lightening, but it’s been over an hour and the thunder is still rumbling. The rain is a soft pitter patter and I don’t hear the wind like I did.


Who knows. Maybe I’ll wait a bit and eat dinner sometime closer to 7 to help break it up a little. Otherwise I might be wide awake at 3am and I know I’m too chicken shit to go hike in the dark in the snow alone, hahaha, so if I did, I’d just lay here waiting for 5am to roll around. Part of me thinks I should just eat to make the pack lighter, because that is the smartest thing to do, replace calories, have a warm belly when you’re cold, lighten the load. But I’m just not feeling it right now.


Alright, until tomorrow I guess, unless I get fidgety and think of more things to ramble on about. Goodnight!

PCT Day 138

Start: 2619.1

Stop: 2639.9

Today’s miles: 20.8

Total PCT miles: 2354.6

Yep. That “future me” problem of the tent falling happened around 3:30 in the morning. I didn’t expect it to continue to get worse, but of course.. it did. I tried to fall back to sleep after fixing all my tent stakes, but I was real restless. We were still packed and on trail by 6:30.


We were greeted with another beautiful sunrise-the colors of cotton candy. The wind was still very intense, too. It felt like we were going to get blown off the trail. Even still, we walked and laughed and dealt with it. We’re getting so close to the border now that not much can rain on my parade.


The trail was overgrown but gorgeous. There were storm clouds off in the distance, but it never rained. The rocks were sticking out of the mountainsides in sharp, odd angles making for really cool formations. I made Marquis pose with a lamppost bush, both of us cackling now about how pissed off we were the other night when we hiked the wrong way in the dark, and he smacked into one of these.


We stopped at a campground for water and to eat a snack. The water tasted absolutely awful.. but with no other options, I poured more mio flavor enhancer into my bottle than is probably advisable. Marquis poured mio on his bread-so-Lord, please be with us, we are not ok. Lol.. but the break was nice and the campground was pretty. The trail cuts right through it. I wish it would cut through a dang Taco Bell.


We made it to Lake Morena campground by 1pm-somewhat cranky because of how hot it was. By 1:15, we got to the little restaurant down the road and ordered lunch. I got a Philly cheesesteak and fries and poppers-I should have gotten a burger, but believe it or not, I’m a little burger-ed out. Oh well. Choices were made, and I ate it all anyway.

While sitting there, Marquis saw a comment on our app about someone losing an item at the campground we just walked through, so after we ate, we went back to search for it. It’s a wooden spoon with sentimental value. Marquis found it and is going to mail it back to them when we get to Campo tomorrow. We filtered more water, that didn’t taste bad, and continued hiking another 5 miles to the next campsite.


It was mostly uphill, and though there were views of Lake Morena, neither one of us were that impressed. What did shake us up a bit was running into a tarantula. Marquis spotted the big thing and stopped-we watched it awhile and every time Marquis went to pass it, it came closer to him! It’s like it knew we were scared of it and it was messing with us! When it was my turn to go by, I literally ran, high knees and tip toes, and screamed the whole time.. Marquis got a good laugh out of that. I really don’t like snakes or spiders.. I can handle spiders a little bit better though.. not that anyone could tell with my reactions.


Our campsite is the only flat area not currently overgrown with poison oak. The stream nearby is also covered in it.. we had to ease through everything, watching every step, and then hunt for somewhere safe to set up camp. I went to put my tent right under a huge dead limb-so we moved my stuff and whacked at the limb with our trekking poles like a piñata. It was instant anger management. Once everything that could fall off, did-we finished setting up our stuff and had dinner.


It’s a little chilly but it isn’t windy-so I think we’ll sleep good night! We get into Campo tomorrow!! We could technically “finish” tomorrow, but I talked Marquis into not touching the border until Friday morning, Friday the 13! Ha! Ok.. that’s all I have 🙂 Sweet dreams, y’all.