Hello welcome to another episode of Papa Bear Heights.

Today we have with us a Triple Crowner.

For those of you who don't know what that means,

A Triple Crowner has hiked the Appalachian Trail,

the Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail.

In addition to accomplishing this feat, he has hiked the Long Trail and the John Muir Trail.

But this is not why we're speaking to our guest today.

We're going to talk to him about the American perimeter trail.

I'd like now to introduce the founder, the creator, and the executive director of the American

Perimeter Trail, Ru McKindrick.

Roo, welcome to the podcast.

Oh, Halley, thank you so very much for having me today.

So let's start by telling us what is the American perimeter field because it's so new new most of us have never heard of it honestly until it was brought to my attention a few days ago. I'd never heard of it.

Yeah, I typically don't post a lot on other online pages besides our own because people think I'm

joking most of the time when I try to explain you know exactly what this is and what we're trying to accomplish. I mean as an

organization we're called the American Primeter Trail Conference and our

basic mission and vision is to create a protected corridor of land and natural resources that would be available for recreational use and it roughly traces the contiguous United States.

So I don't have an exact mileage, but it basically follows the perimeter, like I said, of the United States. It uses public and private land,

often using National Forest or BLM land, uses a series of trails and interconnected ways trying to bring and

connect communities together and it's over 12,000 miles. So it's a concept that I came up with and I think I thought of it 10 years ago.

And then just over, I guess back in July of 2019, I decided to, it was time to go hike this trail and get the organization started.

Because a lot of backpackers and hikers were kind of map geeks, I guess you can say we look at maps sometimes and dream of,

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