Getting Somewhere - the Appalachian Trail and Designing an Energy Efficient House

The title actually refers to 2 different topics - my friends on the Appalachian trail and progress in building the energy efficient home.

First, the Appalachian Trail (AT). Lynn and Mike are now at the Plum Orchard Gap Shelter in Georgia with not much cell phone service so no post tonight or tomorrow on their blog "We Go Traveling". They are getting ready to cross into NC in about 4 miles. They currently are at mile 74 on the 5th day of hiking. Most days they go about 15-16 miles. I know that they hope to average about 20 miles per day so they can easily finish in June, but 15 sounds pretty good to me for starters. It has been pretty cold here in the Southeast compared to the previous 3-4 winters so this sounds like a reasonable pace for experienced hikers.

I just finished "Walking with Spring" by Earl Shaffer, the first person to hike the entire Appalachian Trail. He was a poet as well as a hiker. This is what he wrote to the designers of the trail who were having a conference about the trail as he was approaching the end of his journey:

"The flowers bloom, the songbirds sing

And though it sun or rain, 

I walk the mountaintops with Spring

From Georgia north to Maine."

Amazingly, Benton MacKaye, the person who initially conceived of the trail did not think anyone would hike the trail from end to end in one long trek. His goal was to give people all along the trail to access to wilderness. 

So Lynn and Mike are getting somewhere in the their dream to hike the AT and John and I are getting somewhere in our quest to build a decent home for John.

We went to John's bank today to get a construction loan which is something we knew nothing about and are probably seriously delinquent in getting this started. Unfortunately, his bank does not offer construction loans. We went to Greer State Bank where I had the mortgage loan for the Lenore house. They do construction loans, but that means it has to be in my name as well, which I really was trying to avoid. 

Anyway, it does look like we will be able to get a loan, just have to jump through the regular loan application hoops. 

So we are getting somewhere as well, maybe not as fast as Lynn and Mike, but somewhere nevertheless.