Centrics: Hikecentric

Hiking The Pacific Crest Trail: Mile 395 – Day 24 - Colin Arisman

Note: The Pacific Crest Trail is a 2650-mile wilderness pathway that stretches from the Mexican to the Canadian border across California, Oregon and Washington. Colin Arisman, a 23-year old Vermonter, is thru-hiking the trail and will be posting updates on Muscles Not Motors as he makes his way northward.

On April 18th I began thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail with Casey Gannon, a life-long friend and fellow Montpelier native. At 5:30 in the morning we arrived at the door of a hiker from San Diego who had thru-hiked the PCT in 2009 and now provides rides to the trail…

On the Brink: Counting Down to my Pacific Crest Trail Thru-Hike - Colin Arisman

The clock ticked on the wall above my desk. Three a.m. and three exams in the morning. In college, in these moments, my thoughts would slip into the Pacific Crest Trail daydream. My mind free, my legs wrapped up in a sort of perpetual motion, my body slowly gliding along the continuous 2,650-mile stretch of trail that runs from the Mexican to Canadian borders. Five months of pure immersion in nature. A wilderness pilgrimage of epic proportions. The ultimate physical and mental test. I first heard of the Pacific Crest Trail while I was traveling in Ecuador during…

Active Summer, Active School Year - The Valentine Family

Gone are the lazy, relaxed, and unstructured days of summer. Along with the return to cooler weather, we’ve returned to the busy school year schedule. What does that mean for the typical “active family?”

Well, I don’t know if we qualify as typical, but I can tell you about our experiences. One would think we’d be much more active in the summer, and in some ways that can be true. If you look at one day, or one weekend, or one week, yes, we tend to do a lot…

Island Life - Jenny Muilenburg

My family had the great fortune of spending most of August in a house in the middle of the wooded end of an island in Puget Sound. This was a big switch from the suburban city life we usually live, the one where we can drive to anything we want, and can walk to the pool and the library. Here, the mailbox is a mile down the gravel road, and the nearest store is at least a 20 minute drive. The county bus doesn’t even come down as far as we are – the closest stop is 5 miles…

Walking as a Family - Jenny Muilenburg

The only time we took private transportation during our European vacation was when the Amsterdam train station had a computer malfunction. None of the trains ran for several hours, and shortly before we were to take a tram over to the station, our hotel warned us and helped us book a private car.

This means we walked just about everywhere. We took trams and trains and subways and boats, but everything else was on foot. As we talked about how far we’d walked on our trip, the kids lamented the fact that we hadn&rsquo…