Welcome to Trail Tees!
As this is Trail Tees’ first foray into the exciting world of blogging, we figure you might enjoy a warm welcome, a bit about how we’ve come to be, along with a taste of the many things to come.
So here’s the warm welcome: We WELCOME you to Trail Tees, thanks for checking us out, and we appreciate you taking the time to read this!! (That was meant to be a 3 season, 12 degree down mummy bag type welcome, so we hope it was warm enough) Seriously though, we’re glad you’re here!
If you’re still reading and we haven’t lost you to some other notification from one of your many apps, then thank you again! If you haven’t already, we hope you take the opportunity to visit our “About Us” page on the website. While the short read is nowhere near as exhilarating as the experience of hiking itself can be, it should give you a clue as to where we got our inspiration and how we got things started. Since some of you may be reading this whilst on a short ‘catch your breath’ break at the peak of some beautiful mountain – and you don’t have the time to go visit the site – we’ll give you the short version here:
My name is Jarrod – trail name ‘North Stars’ - and I have always been an avid hiker/backpacker, and most of my experience came from my adventures in scouting when I was young. After being swept up in the corporate management world I lost touch with those adventures which captured my attention, as well as my heart, and I knew that I needed to find them again. I decided to go after my childhood dream of thru hiking the Appalachian Trail. I know, you’re thinking ‘just another thru hiker who wants to tell their story, write a book, get everyone they know a pair of hiking boots to join them on their quests’… Well, that may be partially true! That’s part of what happens when you’re inspired by the great outdoors! It was an eye opening, equalizing, intense struggle against the elements, as well as a struggle both physically and mentally. It was all of those things at once, yet at the same time it was an unparalleled experience that constantly urged me to find a way to share it with others.
Somewhere around the White Mountains I realized that I was going to make it all the way. I had one more state to go, and was going to have completed this NOBO thru hike as I always dreamed that I would! I was proud of myself! Most thru hikers know the feeling of impressive pride that creeps up on them at some point on the trail after they have successfully beaten the elements, the periods of loneliness, the lingering dampness in their socks each morning, the 2-3 lbs of candy bars they carry along the trail, etc. That was my moment. I wanted to make something that would strike up a conversation about not only the thru hike, but hiking and the outdoors in general. Thus, Trail Tees was born.
I wanted to wear something when I went out that other passionate hikers or backpackers would instantly recognize and inquire about. “Hey there – are you a thru hiker?” or “Is that about the AT?” I wanted something that even those ‘other people’ (the one’s who don’t like the outdoors… I know right?) would be inspired to ask about when they saw what I was wearing. I began coming up with ideas of Tees that I would love to wear, yet when I searched for something similar, I just couldn’t find what I was looking for. I already loved talking about my thru hike, and hell – I wasn’t even finished with it! I knew that the passion for the outdoors was back, and it wasn’t going anywhere, and that I wanted to be involved with this amazing community forever! I wanted to design T-shirts for hikers/backpackers in general, for thru hikers of the A.T., as well as T-shirts for thru hikers of all the other incredible trails that this world has to offer. So far we’ve tackled some hiking Tees and some A.T. thru hiking Tees, but we will be adding designs to the site every other week or so. We will be adding other trails across the U.S. as we go, and trails from other countries too!
This blog, which by the way if you are still reading – we applaud you for your attention, is another way that we want to stay connected to the outdoor community. We want to provide you with some great reading material a few times a month so that you can enjoy yourself after digging that 'cathole', or after thoroughly checking the seat in the privy for spiders. We hope to be as original as we can, and to keep you entertained and up to date on the world of hiking/backpacking and thru hiking.
We hope you love our content! If you do, share us with your friends – don’t worry, it’s ok to geek out about the outdoors, no one is judging you! If you don’t like us, that’s ok too – just don’t throw us down into the privy. Remember, it’s difficult enough for the trail maintainers to clean as is! We hope that you’ll come back to visit the site as often as we can update it, and follow the blog if we can keep your attention! Please tell us what you like about the site, the designs, and the blog – as well as what we can do to improve!
Until next time, we’ll see you out there!