Western Carolina University – July 13 – 15, 2018

My first Trail Dame Summit!

It was a great weekend of meeting new women, making plans for more hiking adventures, and participating in several interesting sessions.  I arrived on Friday afternoon.  After checking into the dorm and leafing through the schedule, I saw there was a session starting in 10 minutes on “organic camping”.

The session was being given by Lucky Sheep‘s Patrick Clark who had multiple chemical sensitivities and had no choice but to find another way.  While I could not get into some of what he and his co-presenter were stating as truth, it was definitely a conversation starter.  I was especially amused watching my fellow dame, Lola, a bonified Ph.D. scientist, over in the corner watching this guy dish it out.  😀 😀  I mean he was advocating not filtering water from creeks/springs for god’s sake. When challenged on that one, he backed off saying, “well, North Carolina, has good water sources” …um, okay…I thought, wait until the fracked water comes your way…  HYOH, but I will still be filtering!

The next day’s sessions were better suited to me. My favorite was a session given by Lightheart Gear‘s Judy Gross (who was also my roomie).  This was a session on how to make your own stuff sack or rain skirt.  I chose to make a stuff sack, as did my hiking pal, Google.  Quite successful! And Judy gave away scrap fabric from her stash, so I now have some techie fabric to with which to practice!

BoobOnARock and Google with the “memade” stuff sacks!  Judy Gross in the background…a wonderful teacher!

On Sunday, I was a little discombobulated as I was giving a session and in the afternoon heading to the mountains to start my section hike in North Carolina…summary & pics to come to the blog soon! Anyway, I decided to attend a super fun session on painting a mandala-like design on canvas.  I am seriously impressed with myself!

Gave this to sweetie when I got home 🙂

The weekend highlight and big, big surprise was winning an award for my leadership with the Maryland Chapter of Trail Dames.  I was slightly embarrassed by the attention. 🙂  Heading up the Maryland Chapter is a labor of love, I assure you.  I love to hike and I love to create opportunities for other women to get out in the woods!

Such a cheezy gal!

Post-Summit, my dames and I headed to North Carolina’s Applachian Trail! Hike On!