2/3....

So I'm 2/3 through my internship. I only have 4 more weeks and then I'll be back at home. In some respects I'm looking forward to being back home, but at the same time this summer seems to have gone by pretty quickly. It's going to be tough to not have ready access to so many trails, and so many salamanders, and so many birds. And it sucks that I've only gone backpacking once here this summer (4th of July weekend, I'll probably post about that when I get home and have more internet time). I have been gradually building up my gear though. I can obviously take a backpacking trip successfully, but there are just a few more things that would make it more effective. I already ordered a backpacking tent (it was actually delivered here already but who knows where the hell it is; I'll have to check the warehouse on Monday), and really the other major thing that I need is a water filter/Steripen. I'm definitely leaning toward the steripen. It just really sucked trying to chemically treat all of my water. The Chlorine Dioxide that I bought was the only one that killed Giardia and Cryptosporidium, but it also takes 4 hours to completely work. Which means that you have to carry more water than you normally would with other filtration means. Also, I was reading the label and the chemical is quite nasty (before the 4 hours are up). Extremely toxic to aquatic life (don't fumble and drop one in a stream!) and you shouldn't even really touch the stuff (which we definitely did last summer when we used it).

Anyways, my computer time is about to expire, and this is my third session online already. So I'm going to have to cut this short so I can eat/make phone calls/maybe browse around the Happy Hiker.

Oh, and if anyone is interested in hiking the AT, I"m thinking about doing it...