Renee & Tim "Thruhikers" on Walking from Mexico to Canada, Intimacy Outdoors & Getting Lost

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I think our record for not showering was 23 days. Who smelled more after those 23 days? Pretty equally terrible. It was a very panicky moment. It was terrifying. We knew the next water was 12 miles out and we got there and there was no water after that. It was 20 miles to the next water source. You guys ever gotten an argument while hiking? Yes. Definitely.

It's worse for Renee, for sure. Because I walk a little faster so she's stuck with me. Intimacy when you're hiking for five and a half months. Does it happen? Are you exhausted? Are you too exposed? You must have a TikTok because that's TikTok's favorite question.

Today on the Unplay podcast, we sat down with through hikers Renee and Tim. Imagine hiking 20 miles a day every day for five months. That's what Renee and Tim did twice. It's called the Continental Divide Trail, which goes from Chihuahua, Mexico, all the way to Alberta, Canada. And if that wasn't enough time outside, they've canoeed for 1,200 miles straight through the Columbia River. We talk about sleeping outside with no tent, getting caught naked, and how they go to the bathroom in the woods, all in today's episode.

I don't know if you guys realize this, but if you do the math, if you walk 20 miles every single day for five months straight, that's how long it takes to walk 3,000 miles and that is the length of, correct me if I'm wrong, that's the length of the Continental Divide Trail, right? Yeah, we don't need to do the math and we've experienced that exact five months is how long it took, right, getting a little over 20 a day. You guys are hardcore.

And it was all Renee. It's Renee's fault we started doing this. Definitely. Really? To answer that question. Tim's mom gave me the book Wild for a present one year about Cheryl's trade. It's a movie too. Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and I was just very intrigued and just kept telling Tim we need to do this.

Let's do it now. Let's not wait. And Tim kept saying we need to retire before we do it. And yeah, somehow I convinced him. I thought she was crazy. Yeah. Because you guys both work regular jobs while you're taking five months off of work. How does that how does that work? Like while you're working and hiking five months.

Yeah, I'm an engineer, Tim is a scientist. For our first through hike of the Pacific Crest Trail, we quit our jobs and had some ideas, some kind of loose things lined up after, but yeah, it was a big risk that we took. Yeah, you're like, our expenses will be low, because we're just living on the land, kind of.

Yeah, like we had a lifestyle where we were saving money and living simply. And so financially, we knew we could do it. And I still felt like both of our careers were going well. And who leaves a good career kind of right as they're hitting the stride and goes off to be homeless for five months, four months.

Yeah, and literally homeless. We packed up all of our stuff, put it in Tim's mom's basement, and sold your house. We had an apartment. We moved out of the apartment, and got rid of that. Was your mom worried? Because I'm sure this conversation went something like, hey, mom, I know I'm a scientist, but I'm going to quit my job and go hike in the mountains. Like, what does she say to you? Full time. Full time, yeah. And eat freeze-tried food and coffee.

I think my mom was relatively supportive. She thought it was exciting. She has joked, never give Renee a book or never get her an idea because Renee has a history of kind of deciding we should do crazy things and I'm always for it. So there was a first hike we did and Renee got us doing long triathlons before that and so various crazy ideas always come from Renee.

But Tim makes sure we follow through on the ideas. So yeah, that's a good partnership or a dangerous partnership. And the book you got, like walk me through, yeah, like what specifically was it about the book that I was like, oh, I want to do this. I want to go do all these massive hiking adventures because it's not like we love to hike. We're avid hikers, but when we hike, we'll go hike for like an hour.

Okay, not an hour or three or like three. I don't know but like our typical for us is like seven hours. Okay, but our typical hike is probably three hours. Yeah, hiking three thousand miles is a completely different thing. It just it sounded really like challenging and it just was like okay, this is

challenge and adventure. Can we do it? I don't know. Let's give it a try and find out. Something new, something exciting. That's really cool. Like when you're hiking all day every day, you don't have, do you have earbuds in? You would have no way to charge them or anything. Are you just like listening to nature or talking the whole time?

We're pretty much talking on and off. Um, a lot of people do in these long hikes do use earbuds, but we really don't. Um, we just chat or don't chat or whatever happened. It's peaceful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Did you get lonely?

a little bit. Some of the trails we've done are surprisingly social. The Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental Divide Trail, you go out and you meet other people who have said, I'm going to go spend four or five months doing this. And you can make a really strong good bond there. So yeah, it's the two of us having fun together.

But then we've also made some really lifelong friendships from other hikers doing the same thing and then you're flip-flopping with them and seeing them every couple days. But one trail we did, there was almost nobody else. It was 2,700 miles through the Pacific Northwest and it included a lot of hiking and then canoeing. We can nude the Columbia River and there's nobody else can use the whole Columbia River. So that was really just Renee and me. Yeah, that got a little lonely.

Yeah, definitely. Have you guys ever gotten an argument while hiking?

Yes. That would be brutal because you're like, you're the only person I can talk to. I think it's worse for Renee for sure because I walk a little faster. So like, she's stuck with me. Yeah. So, but I mean, our typical approach is, you know, I hike in front, Tim hikes behind me. So I said the pace and because I'm a little slower than him. But if we get into an argument, we like split up and hike apart for an hour and cool down. But, but I can't like.

If, you know, if I want to get away from Tim, I can't because I'm the slower hiker. I mean, you can get away. It's just you have to be like, hey, let's walk apart. And then I might be like, well, but why don't we just walk together? Because if I get mad, I could just like take off. Be lying. Yeah. When you have a disagreement, who's the fighter and who's the flighter? I don't.

Maybe I'm the fighter. He loves checking his phone for service on the top of a mountain or something, and I always am like, Tim, save your battery, get off the phone. That makes you a lot of arguments. It's predictable. The phone leads to half of our arguments, and the other half come when the trail gets hard, which is really strange, but we've figured it out.

If we have a big ascent or a big descent, that's when our speeds get different and our bodies just get out of sync, which accidentally leads to us disagreeing and fighting a little bit. And so now we sometimes just pre-plan ahead and say, okay, we have a big climb, let's split up for the next five miles. And that- Five miles.

or one mile or whatever, however long it is. But you guys don't have phone service, so you just know that you're going to meet up at some point, like, come up and say, OK. Yeah, usually we say, we set a meeting point, you know, meet at the top. We're so much more comfortable outdoors than me. Like me, I'd be like, oh, wait a minute, if I can't get a hold of you, like, something could be really bad.

And running out of battery on your phone, my guess would be that you would have some sort of like solar panel or something to charge electronics. Is that something that you use to have battery on your phone when you're hiking?

No, those don't work. They don't work at all. And everybody thinks they'll work. And we thought they would work once. So it's not that solar doesn't work. Renee's a solar engineer, like solar works. But when you have one of those panels and you try to put it on top of your backpack,

It doesn't collect enough sun as it's shaken around. And so we've given up on those. So we'll carry power banks and we have to stop every week or so to get food. So when we're getting a food resupply, we'll charge our power banks and then head back out, but no solar.

Has there ever been a point where your power bank gets lost in a river or something and then you have no way of looking at a map on your phone or calling for help if you can't? Has there ever been a scary situation where you're not able to get service and you're freaking out? What do I do?

I don't think so. No, I don't think so. On our first hike from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail, we decided it would be a good idea to share a phone. So we only had one phone between the two of us. That was a mistake. That was a mistake. So usually because there's two of us, you know, I'm better at preserving my battery, so I always have, you know, a phone.

I'm guessing you guys had quite a few times in where you had to meet up in five miles then because you were sharing a phone probably cost some controversies there. Yeah. Yeah. But even like we couldn't really walk apart because we use our phones for maps and so that was our first time doing one of these long hikes and it was a learning experience of we each need a set of maps. So we either carry a paper map, which is inconvenient or we get two phones.

Very cool. So we've kind of touched on like dehydrating food. So how does that actually work as someone that's never had dehydrated food? Do you have to rehydrate it to eat it? Usually. Okay. Yeah, it depends on what.

fruit, you can just dehydrate and eat like dehydrated fruit or freeze dried fruit. But other other foods like we dehydrate meals like rice and vegetables and beans. And so dehydrate those at home before the trip, mail them to ourselves. And then on the trip, we either cook them, boil them for

a couple minutes or just soak them in cold water for an hour and they come back to life. Wow. That takes a lot of prep because you dehydrated yourself. Yeah. Yeah. That's impressive. Those machines are crazy big, huh? The dehydrators are pretty big. We just recently upgraded also to freeze-drying. Those machines are a beast. Ours came on a pallet and a bunch of boxes and hundreds of pounds. Oh my gosh. Those aren't for messing around.

Those are for intense hikers only. I saw your video of you guys freeze-drying coffee, and it was so fascinating because I don't know. You don't really think through how everything in the real world is made until you see someone like you... You strip in the back. Freeze-drying coffee. I'm like, wait a second. Instant coffee is freeze-dried coffee. Like I just like my brain made the connection and you guys are just doing it yourselves.

And it's good. Like everybody hates instant coffee. This stuff was really good when we made it ourselves. I don't know quite the difference about doing at home kitchen scale versus commercial scale, but man, it tasted like coffee. It didn't taste like that crap you get in a jar. I feel like you guys are onto something and you'd probably have like a multi-million dollar business here.

I don't know. We put up that video and we got a few comments, several from people saying like, oh, there's this little cottage company doing exactly that. And there's other ones. So I think the freeze-dried coffee, we're not the only ones who have figured it out. And if there's a business to be made, somebody might be on it. From watching your content, I've noticed that you guys have a large focus on coffee. Has it always been a big part of your life? It's so good. Let me get some.

Abby got me into coffee when we first got married. Were you guys both into coffee when you met, or was this something that one of you got the other person into?

I think we were both into coffee, but maybe Tim drank it in more excessive quantities than me. Here's the thing. I think of coffee as a health food because it gives you energy. It hydrates you. It tastes great. It's the ultimate thing to put in your body. It's just so cool. It's fuel. It's fuel. It definitely helps when you're walking all day long, the extra caffeine for sure.

When we were doing the Columbia River canoes, 1,200 miles of canoeing, the days were getting shorter. We really had to paddle always. We had this rule that we were not going to get out of the canoe at all if we could avoid it. And we figured as long as we're in the canoe paddling, we're making forward progress. And that part of that trip really required coffee.

We were drinking coffee in the morning and then drinking cold coffee in the canoe and then adding caffeinated energy drinks to water to bring them back. It was a very caffeine trip. Were your shoulders just dead? It's probably your forearms. It'd probably be more... Yeah, I mean, this trip we started by, like, walking.

1,500 miles and so yeah we had no strength in our arms. Right we had said like let's do push-ups every night so we have some strength for the canoe but you know after you walk 30 miles you don't want to do push. I love how casually you guys just say yeah walk 30 miles walk 1,500 miles like it is such a large number like I

I ran six miles last month, and I have not ran since, and it was really hard. It was very, very hard. And it was six miles. And it was six, okay? So what you guys do is impressive, and I wanted to ask about the paddling, because you said to move forward, we had a paddle, were you guys paddling upstream on the Columbia River? No downstream, but it turns out, we didn't exactly know what we were getting ourselves into. The Columbia River should be renamed the Columbia Lake.

Um, so it's one of the biggest rivers in the US. Okay. And it drains like the whole northwest of the country, but it's got 14 dams and there's some of the biggest dams in the world. And behind those dams are lakes, sometimes a hundred miles long. So we had gone into it saying like,

We can hopefully do a lot of floating and get big paddling days in without much work. But no, everything took effort to keep moving. Oh, wow. It was fun, though. It was really good. I've seen some beautiful sights, too. Yeah, definitely. The Columbia River kind of goes north in Canada and then comes back down to the US. And just huge mountains right next to the river with glaciers on top. Yeah, it was gorgeous.

What does a glacier even look like? Like I honestly couldn't, if you ask me to describe a glacier, like I know it's ice, but does it look like it's a mountain and it's just ice basically? Or like, it's a good question. I need to find it. I honestly kind of feel like it. I mean, when you're close up, it kind of looks like dirty snow. Really?

Because that's how I grew up in the Midwest, and I always heard, yeah, all this farmland was formed with glaciers millions of years ago. I don't even freaking know what a glacier looks like. It looks different, I think, on the top of a mountain. Because from the river, we could look up and see that it was thick and the wrong color.

Yeah, I wondered also, I grew up in the Midwest too, and I've always wondered like if you were standing in Illinois and you know, 10,000 years ago when it was glaciated, would it look like you're standing on snow or would it look somehow different? I don't know. And is that where you guys met in the Midwest when you like first started dating and everything?

Yes, yep, we met at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Nice. Okay, I used to grow up going to Wisconsin-Dells to go snowboarding with my family. Oh, nice. Yeah, so I love Wisconsin. And I love Culver's. I know that started there. Culver's. That was so good. I just heard from somebody, it's out here in Arizona. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's the Wisconsin folks who have winter places in Arizona brought Culver's with them. Do you know what the ultimate Culver's hack is? No. No, you get the kids' meal. Get the kids' meal. You get fries, a drink, an ice cream, a burger, and a toy.

Wow, I don't think you get it. Okay, actually you need to use like the little tokens to get the you have to like build up to it But when I was a kid we get that all the time and then it's five dollars Yeah, I think with inflation it might be like six bucks now Okay, but I always got that growing up and then even into an adulthood. I'm like this is the biggest steel I've got less patties and like well, I don't know it's pretty bad

I've got a Taco Bell hack for you. What's your taco? Taco Bell is the best restaurant. Okay. And if you go and get a Crunchwrap Supreme, like, it's like 619 for it. Okay, I know the prices. It is 619 for a Crunchwrap Supreme. Like something around $6.19. And it's just good.

But if you order a crave box, it includes a Crunchwrap Supreme, and a burrito, and cinnamon twists, and a drink for $5.99. Wow. What? Yeah. Who would pay an extra $0.19 for that much less food? It doesn't make sense. That is a good hack, actually. But you need the Taco Bell app, right? Get the app. It's worth it. It's worth it to save like $7. You just, that is amazing. No, I want one.

Now, what's sad is that clip of you saying that is going to go viral, and then Taco Bell is going to shut it down. They're going to be like, gosh, that freaking podcast. It makes some videos of dehydrating Taco Bell food and dehydrating Taco Bell food. Yeah, Taco Bell doesn't know who we are. But now they do. What do you do dehydrate? A crunch wrap. And crispy potato soft taco.

We tried to pick the vegetarian things without low fat things, because fat doesn't dehydrate well and kind of spoils quickly, so we chose the beans and potato. Crazy. What's the craziest thing you've dehydrated? Oh, that's a good question.

The coffee that went viral in 2020. Yeah, the whipped coffee. I decided to freeze dry that. And Renee told me it wouldn't work. And I said, it's totally going to work. It'll turn into astronaut coffee, like astronaut ice cream. It's going to be so cool. But it exploded. I went to the freeze dryer and the whole thing was covered. And so that didn't work. So that was a fail, unfortunately. Crazy stuff.

One thing we do a lot of is just tomato sauce. People always find the sauces interesting, but we use that for a lot of our meals. Good flavor.

Yeah, and I mean, the cool thing about tomato sauce is it comes in a can, you dehydrate it, and it turns into a sheet of paper. And we constantly think we should like store it in a binder, have a binder of different flavors of tomato. Wait, that is funny. I saw your video about dehydrating apple sauce. And yeah, it was like, why is that a sheet? But yeah, you really could make a binder of all your dehydrated foods. Get them a clear protector. Have you guys seen people do that before? No, no.

That idea comes from a comment on one of our TikToks a bunch of years ago. You guys could store this in a binder. You really could. Hey, that's really genius. When it gets stuck together though, like as the elements and stuff, plastic binder sheets.

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We got talking about Taco Bell meal deals and I totally forgot to ask more about how you guys met. So it was in Wisconsin, guessing while you were in university at college, like, yeah, what's your timeline? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we met when we were pretty young. I was a freshman and Tim was a sophomore and we met at a football game. Nice. That's so cute. Who noticed who first or who fell for who first?

Man, why do people always ask that? It was definitely me first. Brene still only half remembers that football game when I like... I remember it very well. Oh, there's this girl. I got to get to know her better. And we had a mutual friend. And I remember that football game very well. And you're like, yeah, maybe we met at that game. I don't know. Sweet. And then did you get married after college? Yeah. A couple years after college.

Yeah. Sweet. Did you guys go on a memorable first date of any kind? Yes. Yeah. You get your face just lit up. Why is that? Because I get to tell a story. I never tell. You want to tell them? No, you can tell them. It's your story. OK. Renee, you're blushing. Yeah. That's a good one.

At the University of Wisconsin, they have a block party every year, at least they used to, the Mifflin Street block party. And college, everybody's drinking. And I was also drinking. And I had installed a car horn on my bicycle. A car horn? Uh-huh. It was pretty cool.

Yeah, I was 20 like whatever just having fun with the car horn and he was like a wheelchair battery to power the car horn. Uh-huh, so it was full car volume engineer what you're the engineer engineer, but you got a dab all the sounds So I was just honking the horn on this block party with 5,000 people and a cop decided I was an underage drunk and

And I was not going to let him know that I was an underage drunk, so I refused to blow into the breathalyzer. But you don't have to blow if you're not driving, and I wasn't driving. So I said, no, I won't blow. And he said, well, then I'm going to write you a ticket for making too much noise. So you know you're right.

Yeah. Yeah. You really did your research. I learned that in high school. They said, you don't have to blow unless you're driving. So I didn't. And then I got the ticket and I decided to fight it. So I had actually that summer left to go back to my parents house. I think it was summer after sophomore year, I guess, must have been. Yeah. Yeah. So you were back in Chicago. I was I'm from the Madison area, Madison, Wisconsin originally. So I was in Madison. Yeah.

So I went up to Madison to go to my court date to fight that silly noise violation, which was no problem. And on that trip. That was our first day. That's huge to the courthouse. Yeah. And you guys got married there. No, it was all it was really quick. Yeah. I fought the ticket, signed the paperwork, and that was it. We were hitched. No. Wow. No, but that was our, yeah, that was our first day because you guys go to clovers on your first day.

I can't remember where we went. I do. It was Panera. Not that exciting. It was Panera. Do you remember what you ordered? No. No. I remember I was disappointed.

Why? Because Renee's from that area, her hometown is near Madison. So it's like, let's go out for breakfast and you should show me a cool local place. And she took me to Panera. You're like, nothing beats good Panera breakfast. That's sweet. I'm impressed that you fought your ticket. Like, how do you even do that?

So I looked up the rules and the rules were, if you make an unreasonable amount of noise, you can get a citation. And I just said to the judge, like, yo, judge, there's 5,000 people out here. There's bands. There's parties like, why is a car horn unreasonable?

And he said, yeah, you're right. I'll give you a six months to not get any more noise violations, and then you're off the hook. Wow. But that's how you say this wasn't unreasonable, which that's a valid argument at a 5,000 person block party, right? Everybody's making noise for lots of reasons. Wow, we have me convinced. There were no complaints. Nobody had called the cops to say this guy's crazy on his car by corn.

You didn't I didn't peg you as a rebel. So that's pretty impressive. That's a good first story Did you guys ever so you got married and I feel like the common question after people get married like you're planning to start a family dead was there ever a point that you were like Planning on having children or were you like present beginning not interested for us?

I think we've always kind of said like maybe someday, but yeah, the someday has never come yet. And there are still no plans yet. Yeah. That's funny. Is that something I know like, especially like with relatives and sometimes like in-laws, that's something that people will like bug you about like, okay, is it gonna happen? Like, is that ever something that family will ask you guys questions about? Not anymore, I don't know.

You just said, stop asking me mom, and then she stops. Well, I think it helped that, yeah, Tim's siblings had some kids, so his mom stopped asking because she had grandkids. And then she satisfied. Yeah. And then we started going on these crazy hikes, so I think they just realized we're a little crazy.

They can't control us. That's awesome. We were talking earlier about you guys cold plunging like in the arctic or something and something that you said to him was that if you go from Asana and you're in the sauna long enough and you just like stand outside and see what agrees in your naked, you actually don't get cold for quite some time since you're still like you have the body heat from the sauna.

And it made me think, because you just casually said you were standing outdoors naked. I'm like, have you ever had any awkward encounters where you're trying to take a bath in a hot spring or something, and then some random hiker sees your butt cheeks or something? I don't know. I've never encountered something like that before. That's a good question.

Yeah, I mean, we definitely, if we think there's no one around and we want to take a swim, we definitely do at Naked. There's been once or twice we've gotten caught. Which ones? I can't think of them. Somewhere in Northern California. Yeah. I think they were just kind of like, oh, yeah. What do you mean by getting caught? Like, were you full on like bare naked? They saw you? Or were you like in the water and then you realized, oh, I can't get out of the water because there's people here.

I think I just remember being in like a lake and, you know, you're kind of really dirty. You don't shower that often. So you kind of like go in the water and scrub a little bit. So I think we were just standing scrubbing half in the water, half out of the water and there were just some

I feel like they were hunters or something out there walking by. Oops. And they definitely saw both of you. Yeah. Oh man. Did they like laugh or did you guys laugh?

Uh, I mean, I think you, when you're hiking, you just kind of get in, you know, we'd been out there for a couple months and you just kind of get into a mindset of, you're just free and don't really care and, oh, okay. Oops. When we were doing the river, the Columbia, there were no other people. And so we had these really big stretches of time where we were in,

Canada in this huge expanse of like, you can see 20 miles to one mountain and 20 miles to another mountain. And we were down low, just totally open paddling with no clothes on. Like we'd have to put our clothes on to make a video because we didn't want to put up videos without clothes on. So that was pretty good.

That must be pretty new. Yeah. Was it amazing? Yeah, absolutely. And like nobody's going to see us because there's just nobody there. So and that's weird. Like even in California or.

Or the Rockies, whatever. Usually you wouldn't have a chance to take off all your clothes with a 30 mile radius or 40 view around you of like nobody could possibly show up. But this was just such a huge space to be naked in. It was cool. So you guys have gotten to live naked and afraid. That's been your life. Not the afraid part, no afraid. Oh yeah, you're not afraid. You're just naked and free. Naked and free. Happy and naked. Yeah.

That's wild. Now I definitely want to go do that because a friend of mine actually did something really stupid with some of his friends. They got hammocks and took like jars of peanut butter and a life straw. They were like, let's go do naked in the frayed in this very jungly remote part of Florida. One of them got bit by a mosquito on their private part. Anyway, it was a whole thing.

But they told me stories about it, and it just sounded freaking hilarious. It sounded so funny, but their experience had sounded like it was awful, but yours sounds like it was great. It was peaceful. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's so fun to be for us. For me, it's so free. You said naked and free. That's the word that I always come to, is when we're on these long trips, we get used to hiking 20 or 30 miles a day. And so that part becomes easy. And then it's just like,

All I gotta do is eat and walk and nothing else. Fine water, yeah. Fine water. And that's so free and fun. And when you're out there for months, how are you bathing? How are you showering? Walk me through that process. Yeah, so.

I think our record for not showering was 20 days, 20. I think 23 days. Holy crap. Wow. That must have been pretty smelly. There's streams and lakes, so we've rinsed off in that time, but that's the longest without shower. Who smelled more after those 23 days? It was pretty equally terrible.

And at the end of those 23 days, it was we did not like it. It was time for a shower. I remember we paid a lot of money for a hotel room in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, because that's a tourist town and hotel rooms are expensive, but it was like we were coming into Steamboat Springs and we needed a shower and there was no campground or whatever. So we got a pricey hotel room that had a shower.

had to feel glorious. But, I mean, typically, you know, we we stop every five to seven days to get more food. So it's yeah, we try to do laundry and showers.

sometimes every other time. Describe the feeling of feeling the warmth of a hot shower over your body after going 5, 10, even 23 days without a shower. It's good. The hot's nice. The visual stimulation is good because you can look at the drain and say, how is it still brown? I'm running for 10 minutes and it's still just dirt draining down that drain. But it's like,

Seven days is a non-issue. I don't even feel gross for seven days. We don't wear the odorant when we're on these trips. I'm sure we don't smell that great, but you change your expectation and it doesn't feel filthy. You're also in the outdoors. You're not in a confined space. And then health matters, so we're always brushing our teeth. If there's blisters, we're taking care of those. We're doing the things that affect our long-term health, but dirt doesn't affect long-term health.

In your book, you guys, yeah, you guys wrote a book. Yeah, it just came out a couple months ago. Congratulations. That's a very big deal. We should all give you guys some applause for that. That's a big accomplishment. We wrote a copy. We're going to give you guys a copy. Oh, thank you. You learned a lot. I know you touched on how you handle injuries or illness a little bit in your book. What if something happens to you when your hiking has something?

Date like ever happened infections or sickness this has happened one of our can I tell this story?

Yeah. We had COVID on one of our hikes. That sucked. We didn't quite know we had it and we had the starting date and then right before we started, we tested and realized we had it. But we were in the middle of nowhere isolated. You're truly isolated. Yeah. And it was almost gone by the time we started.

Yeah, we shouldn't have been contagious anymore, but like the effects of like... Oh, for sure. Yeah. Linger. And we just kept walking. I mean, it made the walking less fun, but... That had to be exhausting though. Like being sick and your body's already spending this, like, using this much energy too to walk. That's wild. And there was another time when I got really sick. We don't know what it was.

Cold or something? Yeah, it was summer of 2021. And that year, right before the trip started, we both got vaccinated for COVID. So it was like, we're good. And we thought we were invincible. So then when I got sick, didn't test for COVID, because at that point, nobody knew that you could

So get it with the vaccine. So we didn't even, maybe that was COVID too. I, we don't think so. It didn't really seem like it, but I got really sick, but just kept walking and I finally started getting better. And then Renee got equally sick and we traded. So that was. Dang.

Do you bring multiple pairs of underwear with you, or like changing back a high date? Because if you're not doing deodorant and you're not showering for, you know, minimum five days, like do you just have like two outfits that you're like cycling through and just like rinsing off in a stream? How does that work? Yeah, we only wear one outfit.

But multiple pairs of underwear. I usually bring two pairs of underwear, one to wear, and one to change into the next day. And you have a couple more, right? I bring three pairs of underwear. So one I wear, one for the next day and one for sleeping. Oh, okay. I don't know why. Wait is really important. And so to make a trip suck, you carry more than you should.

Or more than you're comfortable carrying. And so we both try to do what we can to keep the weight really, really low. And yeah. About like a change of clothes, they would both be dirty. So why not just go with one? How do you go pooping the woods?

Oh, come on. Same way we go in the toilet. It's the same. It's just there's no water. There's a pit. You guys must have like very strong thighs from just like practicing your squat. Like you have no toilet speed. You have to poop for way too long. Dude, like how do you squat for 20, 25 minutes straight while you're on your phone? You know? Like that must be, yeah. Renee taught me, I used to hate pooping in the woods. Embrane taught me the trick. It's a really easy trick.

You don't put your pants at your ankles. You put your pants at your knees, which it changed everything. Really? Yeah. Why? Why at your knees? I think because then you can hold your ankles wider. Oh. And like the stance is much better. So you're still squatting. And with your pant waist at your knees, you get a better balance. And like for a couple of years, I didn't understand that.

And I would, when we do shorter trips, I'd always be the guy holding it until he got to the trailhead. And yeah, I learned. You guys are hardcore. Well, you guys know, there's literally an invention called a squatty potty that you can use to help. They can be carrying that. How heavy are you? You're obviously not going to carry that, but there's like science to, if you're in a squat position or whatever, and like engaging your muscles, it helps you go. And I'm sure it's because of how the caveman did it back in the day.

I mean, I personally think it's easier to go in the woods than on a toilet. That's a good position. How many minutes we talking? Not long, I mean. It shouldn't take long, Matt. I think you're backed up. You guys are, you do weightlifting and your gym courses and stuff, right? You know, if you do like a big workout for 10 hours or so, a big long one. A workout for 10 hours?

Okay. Well, next time you do a 10 hour workout, the next day, you're for us, for both of us, the poops are better. They're easier. They pop right out. I think the hiking and hiking and hiking just loosens it all up, not to the point of being like a liquid, but to the point of like,

And you just dig a hole. Yeah. So to answer your question, we carry like an ultra light trowel. So we dig a little cat hole away from the trail, away from water, squat, take care of our business. And then we don't actually use toilet paper. We, you know, start with sticks or rocks. And then rocks. Yeah. Why thing with the rock? I prefer a stick.

I prefer a rock.

Try using a stick or a rock and like leaves don't work. They're they're shiny and waxy and it really stinks to use a leaf and if they like break then it gets on your hand. Yeah, leaves are not a good idea. I had a cousin wife with poison ivy once. Oh, yeah, that's the other reason they're bad. Yeah, but a stick is really it's it's surprisingly good and we follow up the stick or the rock with some water so like and you can get a

like a little attachment for your water bottle. So it's like a bidet and it squirts out. Oh, wow. And you don't use that with your drinking water bottle. You do that with a dedicated water bottle. Dirty water bottle. You guys just have down. You have this down with scientists, almost like you guys are like scientists or something, you know?

Okay, that's pretty impressive. I feel like, you know, a perfect segue would have been when we were talking about being naked, but I don't know. You probably haven't been asked this before in private, but if you're not comfortable answering, we can move on. Intimacy when you're hiking for five and a half months. Does it happen?

Are you exhausted? Are you too exposed? What was the process? They probably just take a break. They probably just like don't kiss or anything for five and a half months. Or do you just resort to kissing?

You must have a TikTok, because that's TikTok's favorite question when we're on this trail. Really? Do you guys get freaky in the woods? But yeah, it's like 23 days into a no shower stretch, then that's not really when we're in the mood. But during our usual schedule of showering every week or so, it's, yeah, definitely. I figured, I mean, if you're paddling naked, then there's probably some romance happening.

And we're both equally smelly, so like, it's not that bad. Has anything ever happened in a canoe? I just saw your face like... Yeah. Dude, that I'm inspired. Oh, there's a joke. I have a... Oh, man.

So I'm a scientist and one of my colleagues, another scientist from Germany, he was at an American conference that I was at. He was drinking coffee and he walked up to me and he said, Tim, with this really, it's a dad joke like you. Tim, what's the difference between coffee and having sex in a canoe? I don't know. They're both in near water. They're not coffee, American coffee.

I feel like Europeans are even more out there with their language and humor

Why do I feel like our frequency would go up if we're out in the middle of nowhere? Just because I feel like it would bring us back to our like animalistic traits. I think I'd be like, I'd be like, I'd be like 40 miles to get your hands off and I'm gonna sleep. I think that is, that is the problem. Sometimes it's just exhausting. Yeah.

Well, you actually, I think we were listening to podcasts that you guys were on about, you take a nap every day when you're hiking. Yeah, I mean, if I can, yeah, we like to like take a long lunch break. I mean, that's also a good time because then you're not tired, you know? Right after a nap? Yeah. So eat lunch, take a nap, and then, yeah.

Okay, they get back on the road and then get back on the road. These sex is the best, honestly. Yeah, it really is. I think we can all agree on that. Especially like the stage life we're in with kids and stuff. We're always way too tired at night. After bedtime, it's like, I can't happen, but. And I'm sure, yeah, and you guys freaking walk in 30 miles, they're like, we're not doing this at night. You're probably just going right to bed. Sometimes we do.

But the day is the better because we don't have the tent pitched. We're not like, you know, if we're doing day sex on the trail, it really is just in the way somewhere. Oh, okay. I'm not going to ask. I'm maybe remembering this Northern California thing. That was... Oh, that was a different time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Have you been practicing for that? Somebody saw... We saw someone... You guys saw someone having sex on the trail? Yes. Yes.

They, they were in a tent. It was the middle of the day, but they only had like the mesh part of their tent. They didn't have a rain fly up and their tent was pitched like down below the trail. So we were walking above them and we could just look down right into their tent, jarring. And they were, yeah, just right in the middle of it.

No. Did you ever come in contact with them after seeing that on accident? No. That wasn't on one of our long hikes. So it was like a three or four day trip. We didn't have to bump into them a month later. Did you just happen to see it? Were there like noises happening? I don't know. Yeah. I mean,

Both may have to draw your attention. You know, you can like see out of the corner of your eyes the movement and look down and oh yeah. Wow. Thank you to Rocket Money for sponsoring this portion of today's episode. I am as guilty as you are probably for having subscriptions that you kind of

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eight hours. Give or take plus or minus. You guys don't ever worry about like, I don't know, an animal attacking you or some like creepy hiker being like, oh, okay, let's get them. There's no, there's no tent. I don't know. In my brain, I'm like, if I have a tent, I'm safe.

So yeah, you get over that because really the tent is a piece of fabric. What's it protecting you from other than maybe a rattlesnake? But we've never had an issue with a rattlesnake while we're sleeping and otherwise a barrel go right through a tent or a mouse goes right through a tent. So you just it's like a comfort thing and

You get over it. The scariest we've ever had was a... A beetle. A big beetle that was making a bunch of noise right by our heads. It was kind of terrifying because we didn't know what it was. Oh really? And then it was a beetle. So we flicked it away. What did your brain tell you in the middle of the night when you were hearing all those noises? What did you think it was? Oh my gosh, I...

It sounded like a mouse or something. It sounded really big, but yeah, it was just a beetle. Well, the thing is there's insects out there that actually can kill you. So even if it was just a beetle, I'd be like, does this beetle have venom that could literally injure me or kill me? Yeah, but there's not that many. The worst we've insect-wise, the scariest we've woken up with was a scorpion.

But they don't kill you. They just sting. When you're like far from society, not near any hospitals.

I guess stuff. We've had almost no run-ins, dangerous run-ins with any animal, so a lot of miles outside, and the animals just, like, they scare people, but when you get used to them, they're not such a risk. You guys are hardcore because in your video about cowboy camping underneath the stars, you mentioned tucking in your shoelaces into your shoes so that mice don't eat the ends of your shoelaces. What's been your experience with that? Has that ever happened to you?

It has not happened to us, but it has happened to other, you know, through hikers we've interacted with. And yeah, it's kind of sad when you wake up and half your shoelace is gone. So yeah, mice. And then another thing is deer like to like salt. So we've had our friends have their hiking poles stolen by deer and drug off. So yeah, you just got to keep your camp clean and tidy. You said salt?

Yeah. Yeah, they're after the salt. So like in certain areas where they're desperate for salt, Northern California is one. I don't know why, but that's where the deer that we run into, they'll like walk right up to you and you're thinking, what are these deer up to? And then we wake up in the morning and they're licking the leaves where we were peeing overnight and it's the salt. They just want salt. It's crazy. And how does salt have anything to do with a hiking pole?

I think you're sweaty hands. Oh, that makes sense. I never would have thought about that. Neither would the guy who woke up without his hiking poles and found him forever away. And is that a friend that you met while you were out hiking the continental divide or like how did you meet this person that lost their hiking poles?

Yeah, it was on the Pacific Crest Trail. We were camped with them when this happened. Just, you know, you run into other hikers out there. And yeah, in the morning, it was a search party for his pole. And did you find the poles? Yes. You did. How far away were the poles? They were far. Was it 50, 100 yards and chewed up? Oh, dang.

But we sleep so well out there. The best sleep of my life is on the trail. But you don't even have a, like you're not on a mattress, like how does it feel comfortable to sleep on the ground?

I think it's really comfortable. Like we're used to it. We use these really thin foam pads and that provides mostly warmth but also a little bit of comfort. It's equivalent to a super, super firm mattress. Some people don't like that. Some people want to have an inflatable but for both of us we use those and then we've been working out for 10 hours.

12 hours, 14 hours, whatever. And, um, and then the freedom is just like, I'm not thinking about what work do I have to do tomorrow or just my mind is free and like, bodies are tired and people aren't texting you because you probably don't have service. No service. And even if we did have service, we'd be conserving battery.

Yeah, we usually keep our phones in airplane mode. Wow. The whole time. That sounds very refreshing. I'm sure you guys have seen some crazy stuff with all the hiking that you've done. Have you seen bears before? Because you've mentioned bears a lot in your videos. And I've wondered, like, have you ever encountered a black bear or a grizzly or something like that?

Oh, yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Lots of both. Yeah. We're used to them. Black bears, especially we think of them like raccoons. They're always afraid of us. We never get to look at them long enough because they take off running. So black bears are common for us out there. Grizzlies are more exciting. We haven't seen too many grizzlies, but we've encountered some of those.

See, I feel like a raccoon can maybe like bite off the tip of your finger, but like a black bear could literally eat you. No, no, that's the thing. Everybody is scared of black bears, but there's very little need to be scared of black bears. But when we went to Rocky Mountain National Park, I did my research on black bears and apparently back before the year 2000, someone got murdered by a black bear in Rocky Mountain National Park.

While they were camping, so we were on guard. Yeah, it's possible, but come on. Back before the year 2000 in Rocky Mountain National Park that's had how many millions of campers since then, that's probably not something you could worry about. I just feel like wildlife gets you really on edge, but hard sharks. Well, it's just like you hear those stories and they never leave your brain, you know? Yeah. That'd be a really horrible way to go, honestly. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

We've seen mountain lions, not many, but that's always like a treat to see a mountain lion. I think I've seen three, Renee just saw a wolf though, which has always been one of our goals to see, and I haven't seen wolf yet. Wow.

Yeah, we've, but we've run and not run into, but we've seen so much wildlife and they really want nothing to do with us. So yeah, you're just going to get used to it. Very neat. Like you don't ignore them. You'd be smart. Yeah. We, we don't sleep with our food when we're in grizzly bear country. So like you take steps to make sure that you're not attracting the animals. And then if you're not doing that, they're not such a concern.

Which animal is your favorite to see? The big ones, the cats. We've seen like a mountain lion, a Canada lynx bobcats. Yeah, I like cats. The mountain lion was so cool when we saw one in in the Poseidon wilderness in Washington state and like

It came right near us on the trail. It was sort of above the trail and as we rounded a corner It ran down to the trail to run away from us and the way that it moved It was we have cats at home and it was like watching our house cats bounce through the kitchen, you know, just it moves like a cat And it was really cool. Yeah

And when you guys are out on the trail for five months at a time, you're having like a family member or a friend, male you guys, excuse me, male you guys, you're freeze-dried food in packages, right? To like a post office along the trail, is that how that works? Yeah. And like how often do you get a shipment of food in? Is it like once per week? Is it? Yeah, like what's the timeline there?

Ideally, it's about once per week. It depends on where the towns are. So before we do a trip, we'll make a spreadsheet of the towns that we think we can get to. And the trails usually, where they cross a road, we will leave the trail often by hitchhiking, get to a town, and that's where we'll have a food shipment, and then we'll hitchhike back to the trail. So we have the spreadsheet that says where we're targeting stops, and then depending on the

how the towns fall. It's every four to eight days except in a few extraordinary spots where we have to go farther or rarely shorter. Have you ever had a person that picked you guys up hitchhiking drop you off since you smelled so bad when you got their car?

No, not yet. I'm sure we've had lots of people comment when we get out of the car. We've hitchhiked in National Parks before, and I think that really freaked our parents out. I think it is kind of like the culture in those parks where it's like people are

You know ending up really far from their car at times and that's kind of necessary so you're gonna uber within the park you know right you might not have cell service it's like it's not practical to uber and hitchhiking i wish culturally it was less of a shocker because it

It's very convenient. And if you're in a wilderness area or if you're near a wilderness area, good chance the people doing it are doing it because they were doing a hike or whatever. Yeah. That totally makes sense. Yeah. We, one time we picked up some hitchhikers and they were part of, I remember when like Chaz was a thing in like Oregon, there was like a group of people that like,

Basically formed their own city within I think it was Portland Oregon or was it Seattle, Washington? It was somewhere up on the Northwest. Anyway, we picked up these hitchhikers in California and they wanted us to bring them to The Santa Monica Pier and as we were talking to them, we literally found out that they both were like

I guess you'd call them like professional protesters because they were part of this like movement where they were trying to form an L.A. Chas, kind of like they had formed a Chas up on the northwest. It was super interesting. But so they wanted to hitchhike with you from... We did. We were at the weird Malibu. Well, they said, they said, take us as far as you can. Yeah, we were like, I thought you were saying from Seattle down to L.A. because it's been good knots. Well, they got in the cart and they're like, take us as far as you can. We're like, what's going on? Yeah, and we just... What have we done?

We had just been to Hawaii earlier that year for the first time, and we were like, yeah, like someone helped us hitchhike to the top of Mauna Kea to see the beautiful view from the top of the mountain. It's like the tallest point on the big island of Hawaii. So like, let's help these people out and help them hitchhike, whatever. Like we've been there too, and we were just like,

They had the most interesting stories, like it was crazy. Like they had been living, they're like you guys, they've been living in tents and stuff, or I guess you guys haven't been sleeping in a tent, but no. So often we sleep in a tent. Oh, you do, okay. Depends on where we're at. Yeah, I think to prevent, like what if it rains? Yeah, so like in Washington, we definitely like carry a tent and sleep in the tent, but like in Arizona, no, we just cowboy camp.

And we'll have a tarp. So the tarp is super light and it's even in the desert just in case it rains. We can pitch the tarp on our hiking poles as a rain shelter. But yeah, so like more dry, desert-y climates. We like to cowboy camp, but then in places that rain more have bugs, we bring a tent so that we, you know, like mosquito type bugs. You're so low maintenance.

Like, I think I'm too, I fear it might be a little too high minutes for this. I need toilet paper and shower. Maybe I could do it, maybe I could. When Abby got married, like back in 2019, we took this trip out to Colorado and we were so high on elevation that I got elevation sickness. Like it was giving me headaches and I was having trouble sleeping and it felt like super dry there. I was shucking water all the time to try to help cause I know drinking water I think helps with elevation sickness.

What do you guys do for that? Because I think I saw in your videos you guys do encounter elevation sickness and it's something you have to deal with with all the hiking you do.

Yeah, yeah, it's a thing. We pay attention to our bodies and it's affected both of us in different ways. It usually gets Renee a little more than me. It's like rest and slow down. When you're climbing a mountain, the elevation sickness hits worse. So you take more resting and then you're doing less physical exertion.

What are the symptoms of elevation sickness? I always get headaches and yeah, really bad headaches. A little bit of shortness of breath and just like low energy and just like, okay, I need to take a nap right now.

the first time that elevation sickness hit us pretty bad. It was before we were long distance hikers, and we didn't really know what we were doing a little bit. But we went to Kings Canyon National Park, which is kind of near Yosemite. And we weren't that high up. We were at like 8,000 feet. And we didn't think you could get elevation sickness at 8,000 feet, but it turns out you can.

Renee, she got loopy. So we were camping in like a car camping spot and she started just. It was it was really cold. There was snow on the ground. It was below freezing. Yeah.

Yeah, way below. She started taking off her jackets when we woke up in the morning and like stripped out of the sleeping bag. I said, Renee, what are you doing? It's really cold. No, I'm really, really hot. And she insisted she was hot. And then she said she had a headache. And then she said, you have to drive me to the outhouse. And the outhouse was 50 feet away. And I said, what do you mean? I have to drive you to the outhouse. I can't make it that far. I can't walk it. You got to drive me.

And I couldn't win that battle. I didn't walk her to the outhouse. I drove her to the outhouse 50 feet. That couldn't win that battle. And then we drove straight down to lower elevation because we kind of figured out it was something like that and talked to the ranger and said, what's going on? Can you get elevation sickness at 8,000 feet? And he said, yeah, you definitely can. And they turned to Renee and said, are you on your period?

And she was, and it was like, he knew because- Excuse me, sir. No way. No, but it was awesome. Yeah. And yeah, and did you slap him?

Yeah, I am. Is that like, he's like, yeah, I've heard that that, like contributes to, or makes elevation sickness worse if you're on your period too. And so. Wow. That's good to know. So. You had a video about how you manage like being on your period on like long term hikes. Explain it for people that might not have seen that because that's great. First of all,

The thought of hiking while you're on your period is just, that seems like one of the last things. Most of them would want to do. So how do you manage that? Yeah, well, I guess I feel like exercise kind of helps with periods sometimes. So yeah, maybe that's, yeah. But anyways, I, I usually just bring a menstrual cup. So, um,

Yeah, so I have it with me all five months. And then when I need it, just use a lot of hand sanitizer, dig a hole and dump the menstrual cup into a hole, just like going poop. Yeah. Wash it with clean water.

Crazy. Yeah. Do you have any animals, do anything crazy around that time of the month when you're hiking? Cause I remember like one time Abby's dog like ate her underwear. Really? You're going to bring that up or not? Like literally just straight up ate it. And so I feel like with her being bears and wolves and all these animals out in the wild, you must have to like. That's why you dig a hole. Yeah. I mean, you're digging, but like when you go to bed at night, you probably have to tie certain products or something. I don't know. Maybe like up in a tree or I don't know.

Yeah, yep. So we have a bear-proof bag that we usually use. It depends on where you're hiking and the regulations. But if it's allowed, we have this canvas sack that's bear-proof. Bears can't chew through it. So we put all of our food and any scented items in there and tie it on a tree away from our tent.

And we love that thing because we don't have to hang it really high. Instead, it's just like bear proof. And so we just tie it onto the tree so the bear can't run off with it, but they can jump on it all they want and they can't get through it. Why would some places not allow for that?

Ask the National Park Service. They have rules. So there's this company that says this thing is bear proof and use it everywhere. And then everywhere you're allowed. And then you have the National Park Service who at some parks says, we don't trust that thing. It's not bear proof enough. You have to use either beef your plastic bear proof containers. Yeah, like a bear canisters.

I'm like, I can't carry that around. They're really heavy. Yeah, it really stinks to carry those bear proof or the bear canisters, but some places require it. So if I had my way everywhere, it would be okay with the bear proof bed. Can we just reevaluate? Like, we do some tests. Let's prove this.

Well, in the Olympic Peninsula, at Olympic National Park, the Ranger we talked to, they do require Bear Canisters, big plastic heavy things. And we were talking, he said, yeah, there's not really many bears here. You're not going to see them. We mostly require those for rodents.

I'm just like what like let us take our own rodent risks, but they don't really and the bear proof bags many of them are not rodent proof So rodents can chew through but bears can't see I would not think about myself

No, I feel like we would die. Like, I actually feel like if Abby and I decided tomorrow, then we're gonna go do 3,000 miles of hiking. I think we would die. We'd either get eaten by an animal,

We would kill each other like something would happen. I don't know. Something crazy would go down on this hike, you know? I don't know. I feel like if we went with them, it would be better. Yeah. They would make me feel confident. If it was just like Matt trying to make a decision in the wild. I feel like I'm like, what are you not?

I think I'd make too many dad jokes and you'd like push me off a cliff or something. That's so dramatic. That's wild. So you're not packing water or are you packing water? We're finding water. Finding water. Yeah.

So we pack a water filter. So then, okay, and maps and then we, you know, use our maps to see where water sources are and filter the water. Is there ever a time where you like expecting a water source to be somewhere and it's not? And is that a panicky moment? Yes. Yes. It's happened I think once and it was a very panicky moment. It was terrifying.

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We had just resupplied in a town and we knew the next water was 12 miles out. And we had enough water to go a little beyond the 12 miles because you like to be a little safe. Yeah. And we got there and there was no water. It was a spring that was just completely dry. And after that, it was, what was it, 20 something miles? 20 miles to the next water source.

Yeah. And so that's a long stretch, no matter what, and doing 20 miles without water seemed foolish. So we weren't going to do it. So we had to turn around and go backwards towards the road we had crossed. The town again. Yeah. But the problem was it was just a road. It was 12 miles back. It was just a road and we would have had to hitchhike back into the town, but it took us two hours for a car to pick us up the first time. So it was just like,

Cause that was like in the middle of nowhere. There were almost no cars driving by. And the town was like a 50 person town or something. So yeah, but so, you know, we didn't follow the trail back because we knew there was no water on the trail. So we looked at our maps and found some like dirt roads and they had like cow ponds labeled on there. So we went back towards the road on this dirt road, hoping that these cow ponds had water.

And the first one didn't, and the second one didn't, and the third one didn't. And eventually, after going 11 of the 12 miles backward, we found this disgusting cow pond. Yeah, well, it's a cow pond. It's where the cows drink and poop and whatever. And poop? There's poop in this water. Yeah, yeah. That's what the filters are for.

How good are these filters? The filters are really good. We've never gotten sick. OK, OK. It's not the filter out. It's the toilet. It's just that they go sand in the lake and drink water. And it's a small enough pond that it has plenty of cow poop in it. Oh, wow. That was disgusting. And the filters, like, it was this gross brown water. And as we filtered, it came out clear. Totally clear. Wow. And all of the cow poop was gone. And then you just went to the 20-mile, the next one.

Yeah, so then it was like 30 miles to the next water source. Did you boil the water at all? No. Is there any way to boil it? Because you've mentioned, you know, heating stuff up. Do you have like a little canister that lights up and it's like a little skillet or something?

Yeah, we bring a little stove that we make our coffee or dinners in with a pot. But the filters work as long as you're using a filter rated for bacteria, cow poop isn't a problem. That sounds gross. Are these expensive water filters? No, really.

They were invented, I don't know, not that long ago, and everybody switched over to the style we use now, which is cheap. They're a whole bunch of small fibers.

six inches long. Yeah. Oh wow. And you screw it on the top of your water bottle and it has teeny tiny straws in it and the water gets forced through those straws and bacteria doesn't fit through. So after the water travels through this little straw and comes out the other end, there's no bacteria. Very cool. So then you had to go 30 miles without another water source. Right. And so you just had to fill up one water bottle and make it

We had enough water bottles to make it 20 miles because we thought that was our longest stretch. But so we got creative. We drank a ton of water as we were sitting there. We call it a cameling up. Wait, I heard that was a myth about camels.

Really? I don't know, I only think about camels, but that's just the expression for when we drink it. Okay, well I need sort of fact check if you found camels. I think it's fat that's stored in their hums, honey. Yeah, I don't, that's what I'm saying. I don't think it's water. It's water, but it's not water. It's fat. Yeah, but I'm sure they do preserve water very well. So you cameled up. Okay, we cameled up. And then we also like filled our pot with water. Okay.

Yeah, it kind of worked. That's something we would fight about. I'd be like, you're drinking too much water. I just looked it up, and I was right. AI just confirmed it's fat in the camel's humps. Okay. So you're the one like me always on the phone, and yeah, and I'm getting trouble at it. Please stop gluing that. Please save your battery. Stop talking. Can I run to the bathroom? Oh my gosh, yeah. Go for it. You can explain how you get to the water. Yeah. Okay. Just don't dig a hole in there. That's like really nice flooring.

Hey Renee's laughing she thinks I'm funny. I'm literally as I'm talking. I'm realizing I'm turning into my dad. You are my dad. It's freaking me out. Okay, fill up your pot. Yep. Yep. So then yeah, we took off walking And we actually

found like a plastic water bottle, like, I don't know, 10 or 15 miles later, we found like a half full plastic water bottle on the ground. Shame on them. But good for you. And then we were just like, OK, let's steal this for emergency supply. And yeah, we'll boil it or filter and boil it if we need to use it.

And then it actually the trail crossed a road and there was a little trail register where, you know, you can put your name and the date that you crossed and inside the trail register were two small Gatorades. That was glorious trail magic. The people do that to be nice, like just put little treats in there and stuff to be nice to hikers.

Yes, yep. That's so cool. Also, oh sorry, you keep talking. I totally interrupted you. Like a couple hundred miles later, we actually, we met the guy who put the Gatorades in there. He was out camping for the weekend and I don't know, we got to talking and yeah, it turned out he was the one who put them there. Thank you so much. We actually knew that. And he put them there the year before and he was like, oh, is it getting low? I should go add more.

Part of me hopes that the man that did that you guys met was my high school teacher who taught me geology Mr. Shouse because he was the first person to introduce me to like backpacking and doing like the Appalachian Trail because he did the Appalachian Trail when he was in college and was super passionate about geology and rocks and

somehow got me to be very passionate about like geology and rocks at the time but um because I had never like when when I was watching your videos on TikTok it was just bringing back all these memories of Mr. Shouse and yeah we would get our meal shipped to us at the post office and go pick him up and we'd be so hungry out there on the trail because you know you don't have the most food and so anyway I hope I hope the person that did that for you guys in Mr. Shouse was he a 60 year old man that like was super happy with like thinning hair

Yeah, so let's go with it. It was him. He was probably something like that, age-wise, and he was super happy, and we only know his trail name. He was Mosey. Trail name? Yeah, you get nicknames on these trails. We call them trail names. That's cool. We've had a few on the Pacific Crest Trail. I was sausage, and Renee was Blue Man. Blue Man? Yeah.

Halfway through the trail, I decided to buzz off all my hair. Just because I was sick. You buzzed off all your hair? Yeah. So I had like a buzz cut. And then I had like, my base layer was bright blue. So everyone said I looked like I was in the blue man group. But the base layer, like... You're like, thank you.

She you basically never she didn't hike in that except for this one day it was For some reason you're hiked in that. Yeah, I'm usually right blue outfit and yeah Wow, I'm just amazed you just got sick of your hair and buzzed it off But I guess when you're in the wilderness you're like what's this isn't what service? What is it serving for me right? The freedom out there. It's again like why not buzz off your hair and just do what you want. It's so

Yeah, I mean, like, most people out on these long throughhags don't shave their legs. I didn't shave my legs, my armpits, anything. Like, just like a... I love that for you. That is so... That's so wild and free. That's amazing. Tim, what's your take on that? Like, do you like the hairy legs? Do you like the shave legs? Do you have no preference? Yeah, I prefer the shave legs. It's a nice hair. It's like, are you walking me into a trap right now?

No, but I mean I like Renee when she's just having fun and if we are if we're free and you know if we're doing it when we're 15 days since showering like is it such a big deal if she has hairy legs That's incredible I had a question I thought about oh, I was just what how heavy are your backpacks? I'm sure they get lighter as you hike But like how what are we starting off at?

It's a hard question. So backpackers measure things by base weight, which is kind of a silly weight, but it's like if you took out the water and took out the food, how much does the stuff weigh? And for that, we're both under 10 pounds of stuff.

And so if we're finishing a stretch coming into town, 10 pounds. That's the easiest number to answer. And then when we're out, if we have a 20 mile stretch of water without water, we have an extra 10 pounds of water. So it's like on the lower end, 10 pounds on the higher end, 25, 30 pounds worst case. Yeah, depending on how much, you know, if we're just leaving town and we have seven days to walk, so we need all that food. And then if there's

And you're so petite. That's a lot of weight for you to carry around. Yes. That's like my toddler, just like piggybacking on us the whole way. Yeah. That's impressive. Yeah. And I've thought about this. I do try to carry more weight than Renee, but not by much. Like if you do ratio of body weight to pack weight, you're losing. You, you're carrying way more if you think of it that way. Because I weigh it substantially more than you and my pack is a little heavier.

And you're burning a ton of calories. You said this in one of your posts that you cannot eat enough to match what you're burning. And you were eating like 4,500 calories a day. I'm thinking the video is 3,500 calories a day. Yeah. You're burning a lot. And those come from real, like, those days that we've made a couple of videos about that, we've really measured, like, every actual calorie. And yeah, it was 35 to 4,000.

Yeah, I think what do they say about the through hikers at the end of a long trail? Like the women kind of like look like goddesses. They're like super muscular and thin, but the men look like they're dying. There's nothing left. I don't know why, but

Maybe that. Well, because I think women build muscle that they don't usually have. And the men lose fat that they do usually have and lose muscle. And yeah, something about the difference in male versus female body. The men just look scrawny and the women have huge calves. That's amazing. Do you find yourself happiest when you're out on the trail? By far. Yes. Yeah. And why do you think that is?

I think your mind is just so free and life is so simple. You're just, you know, you're really just thinking about food, water, walking and you don't have, you don't have your cell phone. So you're not worried about that. You're not really worried about what other people are thinking of you. Not worrying about your status in the world. You're just worried about walking. That sounds amazing. Maybe that's how humans are meant to be, honestly.

There's this other component of it, I think, which is the simplicity of it. So it sounds super hard to be hiking 20 to 30 miles a day, but you get used to it physically, but you still feel accomplished when you do it. Like you can't hike 25 miles without feeling like you did something.

And so it's not, oh, I have a work deadline that's going to take me a month and every day chip away a little, but it's always like, I did 25 miles today. I've accomplished what I set out to do. It was this small pint size piece of a whole trail, but like I did that pint size piece. So I always go to sleep with this nice sense of accomplishment. Like I succeeded at what I set out to do.

In normal life, it can take longer than a day to do a task. But on a trail, we have it just divided into daily chunks. That's awesome. And like when you're traveling or hiking and it's just the two of you for long periods of time, do you find it difficult to go back into like a group setting? Is it kind of like strange? Yeah, yep. I feel like

Going back into the real world. It's very loud. Everything is very loud and fast and fast. We really slow down like we talk slower out there think slower out there because you're just not used to the you know the tiktok speed of things. Are people like in your family ever like you seem like a different person when you come back from a massive hiking trip are they like something's changed or

You're acting weird, like has it ever been a thing that people have said?

They've said our smiles are bigger. Really? On our first long hike, the Pacific Crest Trail. We weren't filming any of that. That was just us doing our own thing. But we skyped with our fans. Yeah, it was 2018. We were skyping. But we skyped, we sent pictures back, and like consistently my side of the family, Amber and A's side of the family. Everybody was saying, we've never seen your smiles so big. That's sweet. There has to be such an immense sense of accomplishment.

After doing even just like our like if we've done like a seven hour hike I'm like we did that and then I just want to eat a bunch of food To someone who doesn't know what the Pacific Crest Trail is or the continental divide trail You guys have done a lot of these like massive trips Could you like give a really brief like super fast breakdown of like what each of those big ones is exactly?

Yeah, so the Pacific Crest Trail is through the desert and mountains of California, Oregon, Washington, from the Mexican border to the Canadian border.

And that one is how many miles? 2,650. Wow. And the continental divide is also from the Mexican border to the Canadian border. But that one's 3,100 miles? Yes. OK. And that one follows the Rocky Mountains. It follows the continental divide up the Rocky Mountains. Gotcha. OK. So one's like.

Sorry, one's like California, and then the other one's more like the Colorado, like further east than the Pacific Crest. Okay, cool. And the third really big one we've done is the Pacific Northwest Circuit, which was up by Washington, in Washington, near Seattle. We started on the western tip of the Olympic Peninsula, hiked along the US-Canadian border to Glacier National Park in Montana. Then we went up into British Columbia, where the Columbia River starts and can do that.

back out to the ocean and how how long is that one yeah how long did it take for all three of those each of those was four months yeah four months some a little more some a little more maybe four and a half months for two three and a half months yeah but the continental divide was by far the longest one you guys ever did longest in terms of distance but I think we were faster

than when we hiked the Pacific Cross drill by like a week. Wow. Okay. We got better. Yeah. We, uh, we definitely were, you know, the first one you're learning what you're doing and the second one, we were pretty good. And by the third one, we were really good at this. You get more efficient. You get used to it.

Yeah, and you're always just learning new tricks from other people. And yeah, you don't really have downtime. Cause I was like, you could, it'd be so nice to just read a book in the middle of nowhere, but like a book is heavy. Yeah, we really carry that. Yeah. And, and we also just are always walking, uh, downtime. We often were saying like, we should do a mountain break or a mountain zero would be the term for it. Let's spend one day in the same spot without walking. And we've never done that.

on these trips. It's always like, we gotta keep moving, so. Yeah. A couple of times we've had to stop in a town and spend a day doing shopping or laundry or whatever. You spend some time not hiking, but never in the mountains where it would be really fun to do that. What is post-track depression like? Because I feel like you guys have opened up about that on social media.

Is it when, when does that exactly hit? It's just that people who do these big things, big hikes, including us, it's you shift back to society and it can be kind of sad to not have this life that we just described how much we love it. So you take something you really love and you just push it off into the mountains a thousand miles away and you want it and you crave it.

Yeah. And I think, you know, we mentioned like the goal, you have like a goal that you're working towards every day. And you finally accomplished that whole goal of finishing the trail. And then the goal is gone. Yeah. It's just like confusion of what am I doing. And yeah, so it can, it can hit, you know, pretty quick a couple of weeks to a month later. And yeah, it's hard to reintegrate into society. How long does that last?

I mean, the until you fix it, I'd say, tell me if you agree, Renee, but I'd say that the first time we did a big hike, we had some degree of that post trail blues or post trail depression for like three years until we did our next huge one. And it was just like this, this emptiness of, I just want to be out there on the trail. It's not like we were depressed for three years, but felt a little bit incomplete.

Yeah, I wouldn't say it's so much of an issue now now we've gone back and forth and back and forth and it's like well I have my life in the city I have my life in the woods and They both exist in parallel. Yeah, it seems like you guys are very Simple people when it comes to your need it seems like you really crave the simplicity of life being out on the trail and not having to worry about running errands or you know

worrying about what people think about you. Is there a life change that you made after starting this journey of going on these massive hiking trips? Did you start getting rid of things or living more minimalistically? Like did you, I don't know, sell everything you owned or something? Like was there any big life change that occurred after your journey of going on these trips?

Stuff became less meaningful and we didn't necessarily even understand it. Do I keep going? Oh, yeah, you're good. You can chat away. Super chill. This is the unplanned podcast.

So when we finished our first big trip, we then moved to Germany and it was another big life change of what we were just in the woods and now we live in Germany. And we got an apartment and we got kind of a nice apartment.

But we didn't really want to go buy furniture because it felt like, what good is furniture? So we went to a thrift store and got some $5 chairs and our footstools were beer cases. They have plastic beer cases over there. Those are like the Ottomans. And it just felt like that's all we need. We never really got around to decorating or anything because

Yeah, we wanted a nice apartment, but we didn't want to buy a bunch of furniture that what does that give you other than status? Like the chairs were good to sit on. So man. And there was confusion. Like that was this life change of what is the furniture even for and not that we sit on the floor now. Like we've re-aclamated to normal life. We actually just bought a nice set of living room furniture for our current house.

Okay, which was a big step instead of beer can or beer, beer cases. But yeah, that was like coming off the trail and trying to understand those two sides of life has not always been easy.

What do you think is silly about what I guess some people choose to spend their time doing like it? I think hearing you say, yeah, we just got some beer cases and use them as a stool and had our chairs from the thrift store, like recognizing all that. What are things that you think are just like dumb? Like I'm guessing you probably think keeping up with the Joneses is like the stupidest thing ever.

Something going through this experience is I've realized for me what what is luxury and and it connects to keeping up with the Jones's like if the Jones's have a nicer car than you get a nicer car But now you don't like the Jones's you like the Smith's because their cars even nicer soda and like luxury is Kind of nice as long as it feels like luxury and if something becomes the norm then no longer does it feel special and Making sure that those things that feel like a treat are

are a temporary treat and it's not depriving myself, but it's just I enjoy something more if it doesn't become the norm. And here's an example. We love coffee. I just love coffee. We don't have a nice espresso maker. It's not because I don't want a nice espresso maker or that an espresso maker is more money than we could afford, but it's that

If I woke up and had a fancy out latte every morning, then when I go to the coffee shop and get a fancy out latte, it would be less of an experience. And so that's like one way to, for me, to make sure that I'm enjoying these luxuries or treats a little more is by making sure that it's not what I get used to than I need more and more and more of it.

I think you're right about this comparison mindset being so dangerous because it really doesn't ever end. It doesn't matter how much stuff you acquire, you're always going to want to get more. It's like a never-ending game. And I feel like even the wealthiest person on this planet with all the wealth he's accumulated over the years, I'm sure there's still this desire for him to have more.

So it like it, there's literally no end to it. Um, something, I want to try this. This could be really dumb or this could be really cool, but I saw this in a podcast. I want to try this actually with all of you guys. So if you look around the room right now, pay attention to everything you see that's brown. So like try to count if you like look around the room and try to count everything that you see is brown. Just take like a couple seconds. Don't overthink it, but like look for everything that's brown. Try to see how many things you can count that are brown.

Okay, now that we're done, how many things did you see that we're green without looking? That's not fair. I can't tell you. Not. You can't tell. Why can't you tell me?

because I was looking for Brown. Right, so you see whatever you're looking for. So if you're looking to always keep up with the Joneses, you're gonna fall into that trap. If you're always looking for the positive or the negative in life, you're gonna see more of the thing you're looking for. When I saw that podcast clip, I was like, bro, that just shook me to my core.

Wow. Did that work on you guys? I didn't know how many things were green. It worked on me when I saw the podcast clip, so I totally just stole that. It was, I think, Tony Robbins was with Theo Vaughn, and they were having that conversation. Anyway. No, that's good. Yeah. And then you asked the question, like, I knew there's one green thing, because I could see it as it was a plant over there. Yeah, that's what I got. You started looking for it. What's I actually started looking for? One, two, three. I counted eight brown things just for the record. I counted eight also, actually.

I'm still fixated on your question and we moved on. I'm so genuinely excited to take a look at your book you guys because you guys have such an amazing life and journey and story and I think we can all learn a lot from you guys, especially just your mindset.

It was really cool hearing you guys say that your family said you were so happy, FaceTiming them on the show. The fact that you guys are both so into something that like, I feel like there's obviously you have found a community of other hikers, but to this degree, I feel like that's a small, has to be a small pool of people and you guys are married and you're both so into it and you kind of discovered it together. Like that's really cool. Like you guys can journey for months at a time, the two of you.

and your buds. I love that. It's pretty cool. There's no one I'd rather do it with, and we have so much fun out there, so it is really, we're lucky that we're both game for it. I love that. You found the right person. Yeah. Well, where can people follow you guys on social media? Where's the best place to find you?

through hikers, wherever, T-H-R-U-H-I-K-E-R-S. And that's on all of the platforms. Literally TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. Are you guys on Facebook? Or on Facebook? Wow. Snapchat? Snapchat, okay. All of them, yup. And then our website is throughhikers.co.

quick detour. The website is really fun. So we mentioned earlier the trail depression after the first hike lasting three years. Yeah. One way that we kind of relived the trail was a year after that hike. We decided to make a website where we posted our daily journals and posted recipes

We weren't making videos then nobody knew who we were on the internet It was just like let's make this website mostly for ourselves and for the yeah five people who might read it in all of history. Yeah, and

And then that changed and then we started making videos and all of a sudden the website is actually popular and pretty well read and folks are like we bump into people on all the time who have gone to that website to find recipes that they're dehydrating food from our website that was not at all supposed to really be a popular website and that's been so rewarding that we were giving info to folks

from this project from 2019 that that was mostly for us. And that's awesome. Yeah, cool. That's awesome. And I love that you guys are making content that is like putting out good energy, good vibes into the world, because I feel like, yeah, I just think we need more of that. I think we need more of that inner society. And so thank you for sharing your story. And I just know that you guys are like honestly changing lives. Like I know there's someone out there that probably

found hope in hiking that like would have been lost without finding you guys on social media. So thank you guys for what you're doing. I know you guys are like making a positive impact on the world. Thank you. Yeah, awesome. We'll go follow them, check out their book. And as always, this is where we say peace out dudes. Great to watch. Peace out dudes.