Hi! I am Chuck, also known as Orange Man. Welcome to The Retired Hiker, a blog about my life in retirement focusing on hiking, long-distance backpacking, and the adventures of Dana (a.k.a. Pitcrew) and Chuck in our Travel Trailer.
I retired after my wife died in 2021 and jumped into hiking and long-distance backpacking as a way deal with what I call “Life Part II”. I have thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail and have a multi-year plan for the Pacific Crest Trail, the Colorado Trail, and numerous other long-distance trails.
As a reward to myself for completing the Appalachian Trail, we purchased a Travel Trailer in late 2024. I base out of the trailer on short multi-day hiking trips. Dana and I take the trailer on long weekends and week-long regional trips. Our plan is to tour the country in the trailer once Dana retires in a few more years.
Until a that time, I plan to do as many long-distance hikes as I can manage while not completely abandoning Dana for the trail! Hence our blog’s tagline “Side Trials of Retirement Bliss”.
Recent Trail Journals
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Wednesday, October 15, 2025. Up at 8:00. Sunny and warm going up to the low 60s. Today is our last full day on the trail and in the park. We have 7.6 miles to Elkwallow Wayside. Looking forward to hot food for lunch. Only 13.6 miles total today with nice weather. Should be a good day. I had visitors while packing up this morning. Mom was hanging out about 8 feet from me while I was breaking down camp. She had no fear. The little one was only slightly more nervous. On the trail at 9:00. Nothing much to see…
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Tuesday, October 14, 2025. Up at 7:30. Breezy, rainy, foggy, low 50s. The entire resort has no water this morning. Annoying for me and Ed, but this place is going to be nasty in about an hour or two once everyone else gets up and moving. The forecast is for clearing weather towards noon with no rain this evening. That means dry tents at camp assuming the forecast is correct. We hope to visit Stony Man, The Pinnacle, and Mary’s Rock if the weather is decent. We have 11.4 miles to camp not counting any side trips. We will wait…
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Monday, October 13, 2025. Up at 7:00. Cloudy, foggy, rain stopping around 10:00am, warming to mid 50s. Rained all night, but should clear this morning. Fingers crossed. Will have some showers on and off at camp tonight, but the next 2 days look very nice. It’s almost 11:00am and the forecast and the actual weather don’t match at all. Still raining, foggy, windy, and not getting any better. Worse if anything. Ed and I had breakfast at the restaurant decided to take a Zero day. There are 3 side trips we want to do and we won’t be able to…
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Sunday, October 12, 2025. Up at 8:30. Windy and rainy and 50s. Big storm last night. Rain and wind. We are decently sheltered from the worst of the wind coming in from the east by Hawks Bill cliffs. We can hear the wind roaring above us but it is not terrible where we are. However, we need to leave eventually and head north out of the shelter of the cliffs. We decided to stay hunkered down a bit longer as radar shows a break in the rain about 10:00. It won’t get any warmer than it is now. We only…
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Saturday, October 11, 2025. Up at 7:45. Cold, cloudy, no wind. Sun should come out later this morning and get up to 60. Rain late this evening. We had a group arrive at the shelter way after dark at 8:00. Noisy. But I could not sleep so no big deal. They left before sunrise this morning. I forgot to open the vents on my tent last night and woke to a very wet inner then fly. Outside is dry but wet inside from condensation. Fully disassembled the inner and outer tent to keep the inner dry today. Hopefully the sun…
Recent Blog Entries
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Today’s Miles: 0 Trip Miles: 2101.5 “Homeward bound I wish I was Homeward bound Home where my thought’s escapin’ Home where my music’s playin’ Home where my love lies waitin’ Silently for me” – Simon & Garfunkel Up at 7:30. Packed up and got my backpack into the duffel bag Dana sent me. Shuttled to the airport at 8:45. Drove from Millinocket to Bangor. I-95 in northern Maine is just a bit less busy than in the mid-Atlantic! Got to Bangor International airport at 10:00. Nice little airport. Got checked in and had breakfast before heading through security. Had a…
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I started my thru-hike on April 14, 2024 with my cold weather gear. I planned to ship the cold weather gear home when I got to Damascus, Virginia. I decided to start my hike without any cap shoes in order to save weight. Overall, my base weight was 21 lbs and my total weight with 4 days of food was 31 lbs. Half-way through the Smokies, I stopped in Gatlinburg, TN on May 9, 2024 and shipped a few items home. Overall I got rid of 2lbs 11 ounces of gear. I did pickup a pair of cheap flip-flops at…
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I get a lot of questions about how this entire thru-hiking thing works and what have I done to prepare for it. As for how I have physically prepared, I have been trying to hike two to four times a week, moderate to difficult terrain, 10+ miles each hike and carrying my full pack for the last twelve months. The remainder of this post is a mini-FAQ.
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I am attempting to walk continuously for 2,200 miles North Bound (NOBO) from Northern Georgia to North Central Maine along the Appalachian Trail (AT) over the course of roughly 170 days or five and a half months. This type of hike is called a thru-hike. […]
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After my wife died in 2021, I had to deal with that whole “mortality” thing and I did not like what I was seeing. I hadn’t done any exercise in 6 years and I got winded walking up one flight of stairs. I looked back on the past 30 years and realized that I had a lot of regrets. Add to all that the trauma of loosing my partner of 35 years and general depression around trying to figure out what the hell do I do with my life, and I decided that I needed to make some major changes. […]