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Scott did a fun adventure on the Big Sur coast with his daughter Ellie exploring the scenes and cultures of this rugged coast community.

Scott is now very busy hosting a bubble of pacific crest trail hikers in Pinecrest while Sailor is making miles north on the Appalachian trail.

Scott is busy with hosting pct hikers at the cabin and maintaining the various local trails in Pinecrest California. Alicia continues to hike north on the Appalachian trail into Pennsylvania and New York as the weather and bugs get more summer like.

The summer will be filled with fun activities for both Scott and Sailor. Sailor will be finishing up her second Appalachian trail hike by hiking to Maine this summer. Scott is flying back to California to open up the Pinecrest cabin for family, friends, and hosting Pacific Crest Hikers at the 100 year old cabin in the woods. It’s 100 years old this year – built in 1925. Contact Scott if you are planning on stopping by the cabin this summer for a visit.

Every few days hikers get off the trail and head off the ridges to reach a trail town that is lower down in the valleys. They are often older rail and manufacturing town from 100 years ago.

Tonight we re-supplied in Buena Vista and camped in the city park next to the Maury river.

Each day we drive the van to a remote trail crossing and offer the AT hikers free cold root beer and snacks and fruit. Tonight we found 6 hikers in the evening at our camping spot and offered some magic.

The AT trail is blooming with flowers this time of year and many shade loving flowers continuously brighten up the foot path.

Today we hiked from troutville to the Blue Ridge parkway. Construction was blocking the southern entrance to this popular scenic highway so we had a bit of roadway at the top for ourselves as most tourists want to drive thru.

It was fun to realize that I had bike thus exact roadway back in 1982 on the transamerica bike ride and remembering that back in 82 I saw the Appalachian trail signs and even hiked down the trail a few hundred feet.

One of the most iconic moments on the Appalachian trail is the rock overhang on MacAffee knob. Classic AT hiker pictures are taken here showing the rolling Appalachian mountains on a rock outcropping. The day we hiked by the weather was cloudy but not raining. We still took some pictures and continue a 25 mile day to Daleville Virginia.

We ended camping at Troutville city park which opens its city park to both AT hikers and transamerica bike tourists. I might have camped here during my transamerica bike tour in 1982.

The trail is starting to leaf out more as spring moves closer to summer. We enjoy connecting with a variety of hikers on the trail both hiking or offering trail magic – free food and sodas on remote trail and road crossings.

We continued our combined slack pack hiking and mobile trail angeling with the van offering trail magic at many trail and road crossings.

After Hampton Tennessee we have selected to do a hybrid Appalachian trail experience by both hiking (slack pack) the trail and driving the van up the trail supporting both Alicia and offering trail magic and support to other at hikers.

Each day Alicia is hiking 20 plus miles while Scott does 5-10 miles of trail hiking and driving and stopping at trail point offering trail magic and rides to many hikers.

We stayed with a friend in Hampton Tennessee after hiking 5 days and resupplied for more hiking and also mobile trail angeling with the van up the trail.

We finished another section of the Appalachian trail from Erwin to Hampton Tennessee where we had shuttled the van to our destination today.

This section was about 76 miles and we hiked in 4 1/2 days.

We drove to where we finished our section of the Appalachian trail last summer at about mile 330, near Erwin Tennessee.

We first did some trail magic outside of Erwin and provided surprise snacks and drinks and coffee for hikers.

We also connected with a long time Appalachian trail angel Janet in Erwin and the next day we started our hike north.

The trail was significantly impact by hurricane Helene last October with massive rains and high winds that left thousands and thousands of downed trees along the trail that have been cut and cleared by many trail club volunteers before the trail opened in March.

We hiked about 15 miles on day one, a 16 mile day two and day three about 17 miles and staying in a hostel roan mountain.

We left the boat and headed north by van. Our first stop was Saint Augustine Florida. Locals call this city the oldest city in America as it was created by the Spanish about 50 years prior to the mayflower landing. It was a very popular place for tourists and schools do tours in this historic town. This a popular place for boaters and sailors to stop while heading north or south.

We successfully crossed from the Abacos and spent our first few days back at Vero beach where we picked up the van from a farm where it was parked.

We sailed from vero beach to Titusville where we will haul out in two days. A fellow pct hiker we met 2 years joined us for our sail up the icw

We have been busy starting to prepare the boat for summer storage and planning our next set of adventures this summer.

The next day we hauled our boat out using a lift and on to jack stands where we put it “on the hard”.

We spent about two days preparing the boat for the summer season by removing the jib and cockpit cloth structures and solar panels and store cushion covers in bags for storage.

We then moved stuff to the van to head north to hike and do van camping.

We reviewed the winds and conditions required for a good passage across the Gulf Stream and a good weather appears to be in only 3 days. We quickly started a 100 mile multi day sail north toward our launch point at great sale cay.

We first did a short visit to treasure cay.

Our first night we spent our favorite man jack cay that we visited last year.

We had an exciting time passing thru the whale cut as we had to let a freighter thru infront of us at the narrow cut in 20 knot winds and salty seas. We hit the whale cut just at slack to avoid cut issues of swell and current.

Calm conditions at great sale cay

At one point before sunset a dolphin came to the bow of the boat and swam with us for a few minutes swimming only a few feet infront of us at the very front and jumping out of the water and swimming again. Since the water was very clear we could see the dolphin swimming and jumping.

We successfully arrived in fort piece a few hours early at 7 am with very solid winds and lumpy mixed seas. The seas required a lot of power for our autopilot so we had to run the engine for a bit at 3 am to recharge the battery a bit. We left our full sail and jib out and had to change course a bit as the wind clocked a bit westerly as predicted in the early morning. We sailed directly up the icw to Vero marina with good winds.

We sailed to Scotland and Guana cay for our last night.

Another favorite cay is man-o-war cay. This island is another loyalist island where residents here originally came here in 1780’s during the American revolution when some wanted to stay loyal to the British control and sailed here. We met several residents on this island whose ancestors go back 12 generations to those early loyalists.

This island is famous for its long time boat building by the Albury family.

They now build modern day fishing boats as well as some local wooden sailboats.

We attempted to dinghy to outside reef but the Atlantic swell was too much to cross so we snorkeled on the bank side.

This week my daughter and her boyfriend has been visiting us on our boat for a week. Our first few days were filled with a few days on elbow cay and hope town. We sailed there and spent time swimming and snorkeling on the Atlantic while we waited out another wind event on a mooring inside the harbour.