101. Thank you for riding along with us!

All good things have to come to an end. Julia recaps her two months of hiking the Ice Age Trail and where they go from here. 

Thank you to everyone who listened to our banter over the last 2 years! 

Transcript

0:11

Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of On the Road with that Wisconsin Couple, episode number 1 0 1. As always, I'm Hayden. And I'm Julia. And today we are. Catching up on life. There you go. All right. But before we catch up on any sort of life, you gotta hit'em with a fun fact. My fun fact is Holy Hill Basilica, which is tucked into the Southern Kettle Mine State Forest, it is a beautiful church. But it's a National Shrine of Mary and. It's known for this beautiful tower where you can see like all the fall colors or just like all of the local area and a statue of the Virgin Mary that. The reason, like not the reason it's a beautiful basilica, but one of its claim to fame and like how it got popular was that this statue of the Virgin Mary was featured in the 1876, right? We're going back to the 18 hundreds, the world fair. So it's just like a fun fact I learned while hiking the Ice Age trail. There you go. Because there is a Holy Hill segment that goes right, like you have great views of the basilica. You don't go like up to it, but Sure. Beautiful. You could easily detour and go up to it. Go climb the tower, see all the views. Hell yeah. That is an interesting Wisconsin fun fact. Thank you. You are very welcome. I suppose you wanna. Take over here. Yes. So the last time you guys heard from us it was in September and we were talking about my through-hike attempt of the Ice Age Trail. And if you listen to this podcast, you probably follow us on Instagram and did see that I did end up backing out of a through-hike attempt. I still ended up hiking 800 miles. In those two months, which is something to be proud of. But yeah, something to be incredibly proud of. But in reality, I'm very disappointed in myself and do feel like I failed, which in, to be completely honest, I did. But a lot of really amazing things came out of that attempt, and I don't regret it at all. I do think that backpacking for 57 days was ambitious. But physically I think I'm really proud of myself because physically I was ready. All of those hours of training and hiking and lifting and walking, definitely paid off my body. I had was not without aches and pains, but. My body held up immensely. The mental side of things was very difficult, and losing my appetite was very difficult. Just'cause it was really psyching me out and just was another mental obstacle. Yeah, when you guys last heard from us I was still out on trail. I completed those two months and taking that time away from the podcast and I was still posting on social media, but after I stopped attempting a through hike, my captions got a little less deep and it, I was just reflecting more for myself rather than for the internet. And I think that was for the better. It also did help us come to the realization that we're ready to part ways with the podcast. So this is gonna be the last time you're hearing for us and for now, I don't wanna say that it'll never come back, but yeah. It's just this chapter is closing just for a little bit. It definitely, these two months in the woods I was on the road even though I wasn't backpacking, I was away from home still for the vast majority of those two months. Yeah, for sure. There were. Multiple stretches of 10 plus days that I didn't get to sleep in our bed. But yeah the mental side of it is something that I think is way harder to train for. And even though I've done other challenging things in life and trained for other hard things I really wanted to win this one mentally. And that just wasn't happening. And it wasn't worth becoming resentful of the Ice H Trail or bringing back eating disorders that we've already battled just wasn't worth it. I am still working on the trail. I'm going to hike some new segments this weekend still. Hopefully Hayden shoots a big buck this weekend. That would be nice. We have both have a nice little weekend. Yes. Things are just different, looking different but overall just gave me a lot of perspective and I think. Although I'm being hard on myself about not completing this goal I set for myself, I honestly think I'm the happiest I've ever been. And a lot of that came with just spending time with just myself and my thoughts. Sure. Which is crazy to say because I cried more in the last two months than I have in the last seven years. Eh? I think so. I really do think so. But. I cried so much. It was so hard. There were so many things that were so hard mentally. And just spending that much time by yourself is very hard. But at the same time, I found out so much about like myself, my friends, my family who's gonna show up for me. And yeah, I just feel, I feel good about where I'm at in life and I think that I wouldn't feel this way without. That hard. Yeah. The hard work of those two months. Sure. Reflecting on it, it's worth more to me than anything else, those two months. Yeah. I think you did a good job of, responding to what was best for you too, especially in all the hard times, all the phone calls and, walking or talking through, what the next step was gonna be, what you wanted to do. I think you did a good job of listening to your body and. Listening to your mind and just doing what you needed to do in that moment, which was, I, it was good for me. I enjoyed seeing that from you. Yeah, it was nice. Especially'cause I am so stubborn, it was, reassuring for me to not just stick it out for the sake of sticking it out to come back resentful, sad. Maybe with huge bodily issues because to put in perspective, when I say that I lost my appetite, there was a day I walked 25 miles on a root beer pack of fruit snacks and one granola bar. Yeah. The following day I hiked 15 miles and ate a pack of fruit snacks at 10:00 AM. Did not eat again until 4:00 PM and I only hiked 14 miles or 15 miles, so I had time to eat. So it was really like, it was hard to force you myself. It was hard, like it was just like a whole nother element on top of navigating. Figure out where your water's gonna come from. Figure out where you're gonna sleep, figure out if you're going the right way. Just there's a lot logistically, but then on top of that, having to battle force feeding yourself was hard. Was hard. Yeah. And nobody can tell you it's not, and nobody can tell you. Nobody can tell you didn't try. You didn't try your best, you didn't help with that. People on the internet did tell me I didn't try. Yeah. But yeah or that they told me to. Those people are cool though. They told me that I should have stuck it out and that the first three weeks are the hardest. When you're only out there for eight weeks. Yeah. Three miserable weeks is a lot in my opinion. But in the end. It is what it is. I'm very thankful to my mom, dad, Hayden my friends Jessica Bella and Delaney, who all shuttled me. Very thankful for each and every single one of those rides. I'm thankful to my mom. Hayden, my sister and Jessica for listening to me cry. But overall I'm just thankful for all of the volunteers on the Ice H Trail, all the Trail Angels, all the trail magic. It truly is a community like none other that I will. I hope to become a bigger part of, now, even as I finish this last bit, to become a thousand miler for the next couple of months. I'm hoping to finish like this spring. Yeah. I'm not gonna make myself miserable this winter because everything's so far away. Camping is hard. Yeah, for sure. But I'm going to. I'm still working on it, but I hope to be more involved in the organization. And that starts this weekend too. I'm going on an adventure with the Blaze and Babes which if you don't know, that's what a group of women who paint the blazes and help volunteering on the Ice Age trail. So I'm excited to go volunteer with them this weekend. I also, through this journey, found our nua, which is a summer camp near. Cornell, Wisconsin that I think I will be a part of and volunteer with for as long as they'll have me. I hope to volunteer with some of their marketing tasks because it's, in Cornell and we live in Baroo. But also visit there and attend events there and just help as much as I can because I truly believe that place is special. And I'm really glad that Live Ice H Trail literally brought me to them. The Harwood Lakes butts right up to their driveway. And. It's just a very happy place for me, even though when I walked up there I was very sad. It was a magical experience. Yeah, there's a lot of good that came out of this but also a lot like, just learned a lot about myself and what I want, so yeah, it seems yeah, you didn't complete the. Ultimate goal that you wanted to, but it still seemed like a successful experience. Yeah. Lots of wins. Yeah, sure. Walking away with lots of wins. Yeah, about 800 miles worth of wins. But financially, thank you for helping support this dream of mine and letting me save my money to do this. And I'm thankful for all the volunteers. And like I said, mom, dad, Hailey, Jessica thanks for being there for me every single day. Couldn't, and also huge shout out to my bestie Carey, who sent me a song of the day every single day that I hiked. That was. So fun. I am so grateful for her friendship through this all, especially just great perspective on life and somebody I look up to validating your feelings. I'm gonna cry God, carry you, screw you. Means a lot when somebody you look up to validates your feelings. Yeah, it was a lot, but it was great. But Hayden and I aren't going anywhere. You're still gonna see us on social media. Things might be a little bit slower right now as we're trying to slow down, literally after those crazy two months of driving all over the state. Yeah. We're literally trying to slow down and I literally want to make food at home and just be cozy for a little while. But we're not going anywhere. You will still see us on social media. I'm still gonna do our email newsletter book club is still happening. I picked out a bunch of books for 2026 when I was at the Novel Bay Bookstore in Sturgeon Bay. Your Google Map, if you purchased it, it's not going anywhere. You still have all of those pins. From now till forever. We'll keep adding them. Yeah. We'll keep adding them as we go places. But yeah I'm also working on my 30 before 30. So September 1st I turned 29 and somewhere around close to 400 miles in on this adventure, I decided I was gonna make a 30 before 30 list. And. I did the first thing. I donated my hair cut off. Four. I donated 14 inches of hair, probably cut off closer to 16 inches. So yeah, I'm working on this fun list of adventures and things I wanna do. Tattoo, A tattoo a dinner with the Wisconsin Store Society at White House to hot air balloon rides, to going to Florida with Hayden, to going to Europe with Hayden. To lots of like crazy adventures, just things I really wanna do this year to make 29 the best one yet. And the very first thing on that list is to complete the Ice H trail. So before September of next year, which I hope it's before June of this year, of next year I'll be a thousand miler and I'm just gonna keep trucking on all the little things that bring me joy in TWC, like our, as a whole, as a blog, as a business. It's still gonna be here, but I just wanna focus on more things that bring me joy, not things that bring me likes on Instagram or downloads on the podcast, or I just wanna share what's good for us. Yeah, absolutely. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't think we ever really weren't doing that, but we were, I was, we were just gone so much. And yeah our senior dog just turned 13 and she's been a little slow to get up and down lately and I just wanna spend all the time with her and I just wanna be home. Yeah, for sure. If you're still listening, this thanks for being here. Thanks for being a podcaster in general. A roadie is hitting calls you our roadies sorry, I just yapped about my experience, but I'm sad to see the podcast take a break, but at the same time, I think we need it. I think we just need to slow down. I think it'll be good. Yeah. We just need to downshift a little bit, thank you for everything. Thanks for being here. I hope one day you see us again. Yeah. Thank you for riding along with us guys. Thank you. Bye bye.