Big hike to begin soon

Greetings from Fayetteville! This town is really treating us well. Yesterday we discovered a great swimming hole less than 10 minutes by bike away, beautiful spot on the White River. It was a little too cold to actually swim so we just scoped out the scenery and checked out the cool abandoned stone buildings. No pics, sorry. I'm out of the habit of bringing my camera around but I'm trying to get better.

Friday night Paul and Skye had a wonderful party that involved lots of square dancing, with Matt calling and lots of musicians. It was a great time, I made a wheat-free white cake with chocolate icing and strawberries, yum! The people are really nice and there are tons of folks in the neighborhood growing gardens and biking around. Matt and I walked over to the neighborhood park and flew some kites then watched the skaters and BMXers at the cute skate park. That was prior to the party.

Saturday we got up early (grumble grumble) and set out for the farmer's market to play some tunes and earn some spending money, and it was successful. A full market, tons of families and dogs and great looking veggie starts and ornamental plants. I sure was tired tho. So much guitar playing has my poor fingers feeling bruised but it sure is fun.

Tomorrow we are borrowing our friend Pete's car to shuttle our van to the end of the trail. It is a 2.5 hr trip (one way) and is supposed to be lovely. The trail is called the Ozark Highlands Trail and runs 165 miles. We will be doing the whole trail and it should take us 2 weeks. Here is a link to a great article about the trail in National Geographic: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/10/ozark-trail/white-text

Today we stocked up on all of our food for the hike and got some last minute gear. The general menu is instant oatmeal, pop tarts, or granola for breakfast, bagels and pepperoni, cheese, tuna, or peanut butter for lunch, and instant rice with soup mix (corn chowder, lentil, or split pea) for dinner. Snacks are granola bars and snickers (1-2 a day). It's not fine dining and hopefully we'll get enough calories. It was pretty annoying how much we had to eat on the bike trip because the body gets in such a high metabolic rate that the food just burns up. This trip we will be using iodine to purify the water and mixing delicious Countrytime lemonade to hide the nasty flavor. My nice filter is sadly in storage because I forgot it! Just a little less to carry I suppose.

Our plan is to begin Wednesday morning and of course the silly weather looks horrible, but it has called for rain for a few days and we have had virtually none. Cross your fingers!