Hi, today I want to welcome back our good friend, long time friend of the podcast.

One of my earliest guest, he's a triple crowner.

He has literally hiked around the country.

Our good friend, Ruth McKendrick Brew, welcome back to Pop Beer Hikes podcast.

I'm so glad to join you once again.

And hi, everyone out there, fans of Papa Bear Podcasts. And what a nice form that you've built over

these years. And I feel honored that I got to be in on the early side of it when you were starting

this all out and look how you've grown and I'm really glad to join you back here today.

Yeah, Rue, I refer to you as one of my first big guests, okay, because it was early on and I was

just like, a lot of times it was just be like friends that I'd say, why don't you come on and talk about this or people have maybe hiked some small trails? And I read the article about you in Backpacker Magazine. And I remember saying that Wendy, I said, I want to get him on the podcast. And she's, well, how are you going to do that? You know, he sounds like, you know, he might be really busy. And, you know,

that's backpacker magazine he's in. So we're just going to ask. Just ask. And then you came on. I was like, wow, that. And, you know, the other thing, that gave me confidence. After that, I felt like, I'm going to just ask everybody. I'll ask anybody to come on. So thank you for your contributions to the growth of this podcast.

But yeah, like I said, that gave me the confidence just anybody to come on. So thank you for your contributions to the growth of this podcast.

But yeah, like I said, that gave me the confidence to say, no, I'll just, I'll just ask.

All they can do is, you know. Yeah, I really enjoy hearing that because I don't know if I knew

pieces of that. I knew some of it. And you helped introduce people to the American perimeter trail.

And let's see, I can remember being, I was asked to speak at this REI, and they wanted me to go to the staff meeting.

And so there's like a group of them there.

And I guess we'll. and so there's like a group of them there and i guess uh well one of them said to me he goes oh you look like so much better in person you look like kind of sickly and frail normally and

i was like okay thank you and then i started to speak and this person just yelled like I was

like they went oh it's you because they didn't recognize who I was they you know they weren't recognizing

the work but as soon as they heard my voice they clicked in them that they were listening to your

podcast as they were driving across the country.

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