My parents drove me to the trailhead and dropped me off, it was weird to finally see the monument in person after seeing so many pictures and videos of it posted online. As I was starting an elated southbounder emerged from the trail and hugged the monument. She had gotten off trail for hip replacement in October and she had just come back to finish the last few hundred miles of the trail. I didn’t want to sit around too long, I had 2650 miles of trail in front of me and only 102 days to hike it, so after saying good bye to my mom and dad, I started walking north. I’m not going to write a full blog post about this trip as that would take a whole book. Instead I will post my favorite pictures from each section.