My name is Andrew and originally from Michigan but my wife is a Floridian therefore my state of residence - I’ve tried to escape, really, I have! I’ve been able to pull the family to some much more enjoyable locales; Hawaii, Arkansas, Utah, and even Michigan, but she usually gets the better of me and we always end up back with the Disney tourists and alligators.

Started hiking as a Boy Scout in Michigan - Sleeping Bear, Mackinac Island, Isle Royal, and Painted Rocks on Lake Superior. As a college student I lived in Japan and hiked Nagano and Fuji whenever I could. Also, I hiked a lot in the Wyoming Rockies during my graduate studies - Mt. Moran and the Tetons, and the Shoshone National Forrest, however, as our first child was born (and on through the sixth!) I’ve always had something more important going on at home to find my way back to a hiking trail. It’s been a few years!
This summer I was fortunate to do some hikes in Georgia with our two youngest who are in scouting and it rekindled my love of a good mountain trail and communing with the beauty of nature. So I spread out a map of North America and crossed off all the areas I have hiked before and read up on those I hadn’t and set my annual hiking goals for the next few years and voila, Oregon is my new mistress.
After some negotiations with my wife and kids I unpacked my gear from storage, bought my plane tickets to Portland and I’ll be hiking The Timberline Trail not many weeks from now. So if you see someone out there who is poorly navigating, shlepping a bunch of unneeded and out of date gear, and winded at every rise, that’ll be me. But this is only my first foray into Oregon Trails - I’ve got my sights on Rogue River and Three Sisters before Fall of 2020 and then The Oregon Coast Trail in 2021.
Looking forward to being a part time Oregonian!
