Episode #541 - Days 31-34 Appalachian Trail 2026
Mighty Blue On The Appalachian Trail: The Ultimate Mid-Life Crisis
Steve Adams
4.8 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 27 April 2026
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Into month two with the miles increasing, I'm truly living in the woods now. Life seems to have become more feral, and the simplicity of my life agrees with my temperament right now.
My loneliness seems to have gone away as I'm spending more time with others, and this week we hear from Bright Spot and Wolf, who I met along the way.
I'm using Polarsteps to record my AT thru-hike this year. If you'd like to follow my progress between episodes, as well as photos of my journey, please go to https://www.polarsteps.com/mightyblue and click on the follow button.
I used my hike in 2024 on the South West Coast Path in the UK to help raise money for my absolute favorite charity, Parenting Matters, on whose board I've been privileged to serve for over a decade. You can learn more about the hike and the organization–and donate–by visiting Hike with Steve - Empowering Parents, One Step at a Time | Parenting Matters %. I hope you want to support this critical mission.
Don't forget. Our entire series of videos from our Woods Hole Weekend in 2022 is now FREE and available at my YouTube page at Woods Hole Weekend - Trailer There, you'll find all sorts of tips and tricks that our guests took away from the weekend that helped them with their own hikes this year. Check it out.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are listening to the Hiking Radio Network where we talk the walk with shows by hikers |
| 0:06.2 | about hikers for everybody. |
| 0:19.0 | Mighty Blue on the Appalachian Trail, the ultimate midlife crisis, joins Stephen his guests every week as he staggers from Georgia to Maine. |
| 0:35.4 | Welcome back to the Mighty Blue podcast and thanks for listening along to my latest adventures. |
| 0:41.3 | I'm into my second month now and I distinctly have that feeling of living on trial right now. |
| 0:50.0 | As I said before, I'm never bored out here, but the pattern of the day has developed as it has done before for me. |
| 0:56.3 | Wake up, feed myself, get water, walk, rest, sometimes meet up at another shelter for lunch. |
| 1:04.7 | Walk, reach camp, set up my tent, do my chores, mix with my fellow hikers, then go to bed. While this for some |
| 1:13.6 | will be boring, I find a comfort in the regularity of it, knowing what I need to do to get |
| 1:19.1 | through the day safely with enough water and sufficient food to make everything work properly. |
| 1:24.1 | It really is a pretty perfect way to live. This week I've visited Hot Springs and been |
| 1:30.0 | delighted with what I saw there. Remarkably well. While there are still plenty of things to do |
| 1:36.0 | to sort out the orphaness of what happened two years ago, the town is clearly recovering. |
| 1:41.8 | I've also found myself hiking around other hikers and the loneliness of the previous |
| 1:45.6 | few days has gone away. So before we catch up on Day 31, let's hear from our sponsor, Polar Steps. |
| 1:52.7 | If you're heading out on a long hike this year, which I am, I've got something I think you're |
| 1:56.5 | going to love. It's called Polar Steps. It's a travel tracking app that's going to become a favorite with hikers. You set your start date, let it run quietly in the background, and it maps your entire journey automatically, all on your own beautiful spinning 3D globe. And don't worry, the tracking feature uses about 4% of your battery on a single charge, so it's not going to kill your phone when you're out there. You can have photos and short journal entries as you go. So your map shows you where you were and your words remind you of what that day actually felt like. There's a light social layer too. Family and friends can follow along or you can keep it completely private. As every hiker says, hike your own hike. And when you're done, you can relive the whole thing in the app |
| 2:34.4 | or turn it into a stunning coffee table book with your root, stats, photos and stories. And did I tell |
| 2:40.5 | you that it's entirely free to download and use? The only time you'd be paying anything is |
| 2:44.8 | if you decide to turn your trip into a book. That's polar steps. Track it now, treasure it forever. |
| 2:59.9 | Thank you. into a book. That's polar steps. Track it now, treasure it forever. Day 31. Maxpatch Road to a dirt road, 13 miles. I met up when I was leaving camp at the parking spot the day after, I met up with Nathan Eccles, |
| 3:13.4 | a previous guest on the podcast. He was getting ready for a height with his dog. And he |
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