Great Eastern Trail – Appalachian Trail Hike

Welcome to the official website for the GET-AT Hike!

We’re so excited we had the chance to hike 2,174 miles to spread the word about the Great Eastern Trail, one blaze at a time.  It took us from March 15 – September 4, 2008 -173 days – to hike the entire Appalachian Trail!  You can read more about the trails, view maps and photos, read about the hikers & our blogs about our journey on this site.

Scroll down or use the archives to the left to view the blog entries from our hike.  Read more about the GET-AT Hike in the “About” section, and about Andy, Corley, & Susan in the “Hikers” section.  There are a bunch of photo slideshows organized by state in the “Photos” section of the webpage, or you can link to our google photos site to browse them all.  Feel free to contact us with any questions or comments – we love to talk about the hike and wish we were still out on the trail!

An update on progress in getting the Great Eastern Trail defined and built!

 Read short update here

Our hat’s off to everyone working hard to make this trail a reality!

best,

susan

Our friends from the Great Eastern Trail wrote an article about our hike!

Click to read the article

It’s got a photo from day one and day 173 (the last) right next to each other.  We look so different!!

enjoy!

susan

Hello all!

Last night NBC had an interview with the two men that were shot on the Appalachian Trail this past summer by Randall Lee Smith.  This happened near Pearisburg, Virginia.  We happened to be camping less than 10 miles from where this incident happened – many of our trail friends woke up that night hearing the sounds of the sirens and the life-flight helicopter.  We hiked down to the road the next morning to find the trail blocked by yellow caution tape and a big DOT sign saying “Trail closed to Pearisburg”.   Needless to say, this event caused a huge stir among trail lovers & hikers and scared the daylights out of me.

If you want to read more about what happened go to the article on NBC’s website here 

There is also a book about the 1981 murders on the AT that happened almost in the same spot, by the same man called “Murder on the Appalachian Trail” by Jesse Carr.  You can get it on Amazon here.

Happy Trails!

susan

Well, I think we’ve done a pretty good job of re-entering reality. We’re currently sitting on a couch, eating and watching a NASCAR race. Same old, same old!

We got to drive to Acadia National Park in Maine and see some beautiful coastline. We ran into our hiking friends Red Dog & Lucky Dog by chance in Bar Harbor and had dinner and drinks with them. Then we drove back to Rangely, Maine to pick up Andy’s broken backpack and came back to the Phairs for one last night of home-cooked dinner & good company. We set off the next day to get a rental car to drive to Portland and then back to South Carolina. After much ado, we got a Hyundai Tuscon that is very much like my Honda CR-V and packed up and got on the road. We stopped off in Freeport, home of the famous L.L. Bean store, and did a little shopping before heading to Portland. We walked around a bit in downtown Portland, checked out the port area, then ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant (we couldn’t resist!). After dinner we heading down the interstate toward home. We drove a couple of hours then booked a hotel in Mass. somewhere for the night. The next day we drove all the way to Columbia, SC, getting home around 1:45am.

Since then we’ve been seeing all of Andy’s friends and trying to organize the boxes of random stuff we sent home over six months on the trail. We also did our spring cleaning in September. None of our clothes fit either so we’ve had to go get some new outfits (darn). Other than that, we’re preparing to go to Gauley Fest, a white-water festival in West Virginia, this week and Andy’s brother’s wedding next week in Ohio. Then after that we’ll look for jobs, promise.

Thanks again a million times over to the Phair family for all their kindness and generosity – we’re so sorry you couldn’t keep Corley! Thanks to the Bellaire Moms for the HUGE card (awesome), HAT & Dan, beall+thomas, Sammi, Jeffrey & mom for the cards of congrats! Thanks to Mindy for the box of clothes to make us look like real humans again!

Thanks to everyone we met along the way who gave us support, and to all our contributors to the Great Eastern Trail! We’ll try to keep ya’ll updated on it’s progress.

That’s all for now!

Best,

susan, andy & corley