Hi folks,

Just to let you know - Wanda's back in RI for the moment, as am I after meeting her down in Virginia a couple of weeks ago and doing some letterboxing on our way home. And - yes - Wanda really is currently working on hiking her 5th time through on the Appalachian Trail [AT] (as well as its many side trails), but she's no longer counting the miles. The 20,000+ miles she has done refer exclusively to the solo long-distance BACKPACKING she did in the 1980's and 1990's (including 4 ATs, 3 PCTs, the CDT and just about every other major trail in the US!). The distinction between "backpacking miles" and "hiking miles" is extremely important to Wanda since she did most of her backpacking while recovering from a fractured spine! Backpacking was quite a challenge for her back then, so she kept track of those miles. Her "hiking miles", on the other hand, would be quite impossible to keep track of since they've been even more prolific over the years than her backpacking miles and would surely bring her grand total to well over 50,000 miles, but who's counting? :-)

Anyway, if anyone cares to find out more about Wanda's unusual former "backpacking career" there are still a few old articles about her kicking around out there. One at http://www.aldha.org/kurdziel.htm is an excerpt from Larry Luxenburg's book, "Walking the Appalachian Trail", in which Wanda is the featured "radical repeater". (It was written from a phone interview conducted nearly 10 years ago, though, so please make allowances for its "dated and strange" qualities. Backpacker magazine also did an even more off-beat article about her around that same time.)

But back to letterboxing. On her way down to Virginia, Wanda picked up a few of the boxes that she knew were near or along the AT and found them all in good order. Then she hiked down to where I met her near Damascus, VA for "Trail Days", a long-distance hikers gathering. We had a great time climbing Mt. Rogers, the high point of Virginia, with "Moose on the Loose" hitching along to meet a fellow traveler called "Thru Hiker". (Both are now in New England by the way: "Thru Hiker" has moved well up the trail and "Moose" is back near its original stomping grounds.) After doing several non-letterbox hikes, we resumed letterboxing with some of the Two Gray Squirrels series: Seneca Rocks, Dolly Sods, Jennings-Randolph Lake, Paw Paw Tunnel, Cacapon, Antietam, Washington Monument and Devil's Racecourse. Except for a few missing signs, a 370 degree compass bearing that gave us some pause [ :-) ] and an empty box at Pinto Anticline, all were in good shape. Also on our way home we picked up the Mapsurfer's "Six Layers of History", "Blue Mountain", and "Hickory Run", finishing up with the boxes on Turkey Mountain and Mile of Ledges. All in all, it was a fine trip. Now we'll be looking forward to checking our own boxes (clues at http://alum.wpi.edu/~p_miner/Letterboxes.html ) to see who has been visiting lately, and to finding out where the new boxes are. Thanks so much to all of you who have helped make letterboxing such a wonderful and fun hobby! We hope to meet even more of you at future gatherings (at the one in January we, too, were practically just starting out).

Pete and Wanda
P8 F328 X43