Last week I hiked the Lone Star Hiking Trail, the longest trail in Texas, from one end to the other (called “thru-hiking”). The trail is just over 96 miles long, and it took me 5 days.
This was my first real backpacking trip (I don’t count my four Nepal treks, as they were relatively luxurious). It was also the first big hike I’ve done that didn’t involve mountains of any kind. I had a great time, if you define great as “sometimes kind of terrible in the moment but fun in retrospect,” as I have learned to do. Both ends of this trail are about an hour and a half from Houston, the fourth-largest city in the United States, but I hiked for four days without seeing another hiker.
Day 1 (~19 miles)

This sums up all of the first day and much of the entire trail. The trail was very wet and blown-down trees had to be climbed over, crawled under, or bushwhacked around.
Day 2 (~19 miles)

Passing by a nice private lake and subdivision. I saw a couple of turtles and a couple of great blue herons here.
Day 3 (~20 miles)
Day 4 (~17 miles)

It’s like my grandpappy used to say. When life puts a river in your path, take your pants off and walk on through. The water was chest-deep.
Day 5 (~21 miles)

The end. Nearly 100 miles later and feeling fine (apart from sore feet and more mosquito bites than I started out with).
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I found out after the hike that a storm had come through a day or two before my hike and blown down over a hundred trees in the first section alone. The Forest Service even closed the beginning section of the trail while they assessed the damage, but that was a couple of days after I went through.
Expect a short (maybe ~15,000–20,000-word) ebook about the hike sometime in the next few months.