Welcome to episode 70 of the first 40 miles.

If you're new to backpacking,

or if you're hopelessly in love with someone

who wants you to love backpacking,

then this podcast is for you.

We'll talk about the essentials,

how to lighten your load,

and how to make the most of your time on the trail.

I'm your host, Heather Legler.

And I'm Josh Legler and this is the first 40 miles.

Today on the first 40 miles are you stuck in a rut or do you believe that ruts aren't even a thing on the trail?

Then we'll share the top five pieces of important backpacking equipment

that will probably never make it on the trail.

Next, if you're in the mood for a game night,

we have a fun game that will have you dreaming of your next adventure.

For today's backpack Hack of the week, if your pack didn't come with an integrated

pack cover, we've got you covered. And we'll wrap up the show with a secret kind of all this and that's about it today on the first

40 miles so Josh and I are both kind of at this stage of life where we're in a

rut a comfortable rut I don't. But every day seems to have a pattern to it. And of course, having

children, you really need to have some sort of order and stability in your life. So we do have a lot of patterns a lot of routines

We get up at the same time each morning roughly you know have the same two or three options for breakfast and our day ends up being filled up by pretty similar things each day.

Yeah it's easy to feel like we're not really going anywhere anymore in life, you know, it's like well we've made it through all the big things. We grew up, we graduated

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