LONG STORY SHORT By Kristine McGowan If you visited our Big Trip page, you probably came away with one thought: Wow, you're planning to do a lot. Maybe too much. And, if you're a particular Reddit user, you came away with one other thought: Sounds fun in theory but lol y'all gettin divorced. I'll admit, those are logical conclusions. (Thank you, u/Tellesus.) We don't plan on getting divorced, but we also recognize that the Big Trip demands more of us than anything else we've undertaken together.* And on a trip this long, the risk for exhaustion and burnout is high.
Luckily, after traveling together for 10 years, we know our limits pretty well. That's why Jason incorporated a weekly rest day—or "day off," as our formerly employed selves called it—into our schedule. Six days a week, we hit the trail, hop into a raft, or drive from one campsite to the next. But on our rest days, we do none of that. On our rest days, we do nothing. And let me tell you—these days are absolutely lovely. Don't get me wrong. I love hiking to alpine lakes and mountain ridges. But after climbing 1,000+ feet in elevation over 10 miles—or, worse, half a mile—my throbbing thighs and glutes start whining. Can't we just go home, put on a podcast, and wash some dishes, for God's sake? Before we hit the road, rest days sounded like a good idea. Now, in practice, we've found them to be essential—and not just for physical recovery. I love my husband, but when you're planning to spend nearly all day, every day with your spouse for 16 months straight, sometimes you need to open a book or start up a video game and ignore the other person for a while. See, u/Tellesus? We're trying. Anyway. All that said, as we followed the Rockies north this summer, we were feeling good. Excited. We had our sights set on a couple parks we'd daydreamed about for years: Glacier National Park in Montana and Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. Both parks offer hundreds of miles of trails. Both have must-do hikes and must-see viewpoints. And both are achingly beautiful. Setting up camp in Glacier, Jason and I agreed that we likely wouldn't take any rest days for a while. There was too much we wanted to do. The trails we had in mind would gobble up all our time in Glacier. The same would probably happen at our next stop, Banff. So long, podcasts. Sorry, thighs and glutes. Over the next eight days, we rafted a section of the Flathead River, hiked eight trails, and drove 250 miles from Glacier to Banff. On foot alone, we covered 50 miles and climbed almost 9,500 feet in elevation. By the end of our time in Glacier and Banff, my thighs and glutes weren't just whining. They were begging to be put out of their misery. It didn't help that, in the week leading up to these parks, we’d spent nearly every day hiking in Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. So we went into Glacier and Banff with lower-than-ideal reserves of energy as it was. At one point, my burnout treaded closer to dangerous territory than I'd like to admit. We were hiking a 3-mile trail in Glacier's Canadian counterpart, Waterton Lakes National Park, just on the other side of the border. Small stuff compared to what we were used to. But so many consecutive days of hiking—not to mention a minor but still taxing bout of food poisoning—had left me dehydrated. Enough so that I felt ready to pass out on the slightest uphill slope. Fortunately, that didn't happen. (Thank you, husband, for nagging me to drink water and ultimately returning me to rehydration.) But it was a reminder that, to maintain our go-go-go pace, we had to keep up good habits to take care of ourselves. After all, what's the point of visiting these places if we can't enjoy them? In the end, we didn't regret our decision to shirk our rest days. It took a couple weeks of light activity to fully recover afterwards, but ultimately, we managed to cover all the miles we'd set out to do. We don't know when we'll see Glacier or Banff again. We're glad we made the most of our time in these places. That said—I'm very excited to get back to my podcasts. * If we do get divorced, we've already agreed that we'll sign the final paperwork in Hot Springs National Park, the most disappointing park in the NPS system.
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