40th Birthday Challenge

I'll readily admit that I'm a novice at multi-day hiking trips.  In fact, before I decided to do this challenge, my total multi-day trip count was zero.  Since then, I've done two.  Before I did those trips, I wanted to educate myself on what to expect and the gear I was going to need, so I went ahead and ordered a copy of Andrew Skurka's " Ultimate Hiker's Gear Guide ".  It's an amazing resource and I've use it a lot, as well as his website , which also is a trove of great information about multi-day hiking. Below is a spreadsheet I'm using to help with gear, logistics and anything else I can think of.

Well, I finally got around to creating a blog for my 40th Birthday Challenge.  It's actually been awhile since I've done a birthday challenge, the last one being for my 33rd birthday, where I participated in the triathlon, "Emma's Revenge" .  I'm hoping to do a better job with documenting this one. When I decided to do a birthday challenge for my 40th, my initial thought was to do a 40 mile hike out at Big Bend.  Specifically, I wanted to do the Outer Loop and the South Loop, for a total of roughly 42 miles.  I've since decided that 40 miles isn't enough of a challenge.  This was shortly after I ran across a webpage describing the " Lone Star Hiking Trail ", while I was browsing the web looking for hiking spots to train on. The Lone Star Hiking Trail is the longest continuous hiking trail in Texas.  The main trail is roughly 97 miles long.  Now that sounds like a challenge!  It's also nicely situated north of Houston in the Sam Housto...