[00:00:00] Joe: Welcome everybody to the Live Ultralight podcast, powered by Outdoor Vitals. This podcast is about
[00:00:05] Joe: inspiring you to get Outdoors. Showing you how to lighten your pack and build your confidence so that you can start living your life full of Adventure. On today's episode, we have here with us, John Kelly. He is a backpacking YouTuber with over 12,000 subscribers and he talks about gear and other backpacking tips and tricks to get you Outdoors as well as you know, it brings you on on trips with him as
[00:00:32] Joe: he goes out into the backcountry. John Kelly, welcome to the show. Hey,
[00:00:37] John: thanks, man, I appreciate it. Where are you based at? Central Kentucky Lexington is kind of the dead center of the state. I love about 15 miles south of there. So just a hop skip and a jump from Lexington Kentucky. And what's the, what's
[00:00:55] Joe: the backpacking? What what is backpacking like over in Kentucky?
[00:01:01] John: Oh man, we got some great areas. We got the Red River Gorge which is an hour and a half from where I live. I can be there like I'll be going there. Probably sometime later this week just to hang out for a little while. We've got the Big South Fork which is just south, maybe a couple hours, got the Smoky Mountains, which is another hour south of there. So we got some,
[00:01:23] John: we got some cool locations that are very far away at all. Awesome. Did you grow up over in Kentucky, or No, actually my dad was a preacher. So I grew up in like Upstate New York Northern Ohio and moved to Kentucky after my senior year of high school. So
[00:01:40] Joe: okay, I'm protecting a bit of a draw. We're
[00:01:44] John: maybe, maybe see, it's funny down here. They'll say something every year. I'm a Yankee up in the north. I'm a hillbilly, so I don't really have a win here. Like I'll just kind of stuck in the middle somewhere. Well, I'm out here in the west so we have our own kind
[00:01:58] Joe: of like everything back East is different. But
[00:02:01] Joe: yeah, I I can detect a draw. I I definitely thought you were from the south. What I when I was listening to it but, you know, I guess when you're down there, you can tell maybe their ears are just a little bit more. Fine. Probably yeah.
[00:02:16] Joe: Well, where's your dad from? Southern Ohio.
[00:02:20] Joe: Okay? So that just north of Cincinnati. Just in Cincinnati.
[00:02:24] Joe: I bet you adopted just a little bit of an accent. Well, my mom is from the mountains of Virginia. So,
[00:02:30] John: we grew up with my mom's accent, my whole life. She's very Appalachian.
[00:02:34] Joe: I think that's it. Yeah yeah sorry I'm sorry to those who actually are from the south and are screaming at me right now.
[00:02:41] John: Well if you ever watch, if you ever get a chance to hear our podcast, I do the backpacking podcast with Jeremiah Stringer. That's an accent. I sound like I'm from upstate New York. When you hear Jeremiah talking there's these are two completely different accents. I promise. It's hilarious.
[00:02:57] Joe: Was so you grew up. In the father is a preacher. Did you do much outdoor stuff?
[00:03:06] John: Yeah, I was in Boy Scouts when I was a kid. So I did a lot of camping and hanging out in the woods. It's like everywhere. We lived there were Woods to play in. So lots of fishing, lots of just Getting lost, you know, growing up.
[00:03:20] Joe: Yeah, I did. I did boycotts too. You need an eagle scout or what
[00:03:24] John: I didn't make it that far. So I was cool when I got to Ohio, it wasn't cool anymore. Nobody did it. So, I want to be a door. I don't want to be a dork. So I quit Boy Scouts. Oh, I regret it because I love boy scouts, but no,
[00:03:37] John: one of the kids I knew were in it. So it was really different culture.
[00:03:41] Joe: Yeah, I guess that's kind of sad. I grew up with the Boys Scouts and obviously, Boys Scouts popularity has gone up and down throughout the year. But I think it was honestly like I would have not spent nearly as much time outdoors in my life if it were for the Boys Scouts like that. That's about halfway backpacking, camping trips. Um plus like the people that I got to know through the Boy
[00:04:07] Joe: Scouts is really awesome. I actually worked at a Boy Scout camp for a couple summers. Oh that's cool able to take like I was like 1918. I would take all the scouts up the mountain once a week to do, like the over like the Wilderness survival overnighter and they would have to make their shelters out of, you know, whatever was around. It was a, it was a blast. I really like it.
[00:04:29] Joe: Yeah, I love the scouts, but I loved. I loved to do in the scouts and when I was growing up, so, Growing up Outdoors was a bit of a part of your life. But how is it changed? Like, how old are you? Now I'm 48 408 by the way
[00:04:50] John: that a lot. I get that a lot.
[00:04:53] Joe: I think it's the beard. I think that helps
[00:04:54] John: it may be, maybe it's not, it's not white yet. So yeah, all my buddies that are my age have beards they don't have brown beards. There's our very white
[00:05:04] Joe: so as you sew over the years then how has your relationship to the outdoors changed over time.
[00:05:13] John: Okay. Back in 2015. This is this is when it all kind of kicked in was 2015. I mean, I died gone and done some things here and there and camped out, but not really took it seriously, but a buddy of mine. He he calls me up and he goes, I want to get lunch with you because I want you to go on an adventure with me. and I'm like, Okay, let me
[00:05:34] John: explain this guy's Adventures, he biked the Transcontinental route, which is the from Virginia to or Oregon to Virginia, I'd like that. He ran from. He did 100 to Marathon in 100 days from Los Angeles to New York City. He swam across Lake Michigan. He hiked the Appalachian Trail, he hiked across the width of the United States. This guy was insane. His idea of an adventure was not, my kind of an idea
[00:06:01] John: of an adventure. And he calls me up and says, I want to do an adventure with you. and I'm thinking, and over the free lunch, you know because like I don't know what's going to happen here and so we get together and He tells me he wants me to hike Mount Kilimanjaro with him. and I'm like, my comment to him was actually fat, guys don't climb mountains. And he just laughed at
[00:06:27] John: me and he goes, well, then stop being fat. And so he just kind of threw the challenge out there and I decided, you know what? I'm gonna do it and we did it to raise money to build wells in Africa. So the whole thing was to help other people out. And there were 16 of us that win, I think we raised somewhere around 1, 1 5 to build wells in Africa. And
[00:06:45] John: that was where it all really like. That's where the passion for it kicked in. Because I started hiking to prepare for that. So I fell in love with hiking and then we did the trip, and I was kind of like, man, this this hiking and then camping out overnight and then hiking again, I was like, why have I not done this more and then I got done with that and just kind
[00:07:06] John: of did some little trips here and there a buddy of mine and I just decided to do the shelter we Trace, which is a 323 Mile Trail here between 10 and Kentucky. And it's just all. It's all been downhill from there man. Just that's when the addiction started and I can't stop now. So
[00:07:26] Joe: okay. You gotta break down this hill, Elementary trip because I have interested. Okay, how do you raise money by hiking? That's okay. There
[00:07:36] John: was a company called Life water. And they build Wells and communities, and everything. And
[00:07:41] Joe: so we work with them at Outdoor Vitals.
[00:07:43] John: Yeah, they're fantastic. And so we we partner, we were partnered with them. And so each of us got our own like fundraising website. And then basically what we did was we just told people hey, we're going to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. We're doing this for this cause here's what we're trying to do, and each of us had to raise 6,000 dollars, a piece. And I remember when I met with der and he
[00:08:04] John: said, here's the catch with the 6000 though. When you sign and say that you're going to raise 6,000 dollars. If you don't raise 6,000 dollars, you're putting your bank account information in here. And we're getting 6000 dollars regardless and you have to commit to that money. And that's not the cost of the hike. I mean all together it was a lot more than that but we had to raise money for for
[00:08:26] John: them and Long story short, man, when you got that kind of pressure, it's amazing. How much fundraising you can actually do? I think when all is said and done, I raced around 8,000 dollars, almost 9000 but it was, it was a lot of fun, man. It was a lot of fun. And how was the hike? Oh my gosh, what's stinks? Is, I tell people all the time. I said when you're, when
[00:08:50] John: you're standing at the top of the highest freestanding mountain in the world, It's hard to beat that on the rest of your hiking trips. So but it was it was awesome. It was five and a half days up and a day and a half down because you know you know with elevation we had to acclimatize as we were going up there and so we get to a certain height and we'd stay
[00:09:11] John: there for the day, spend the night and then we go up a little bit more and then come down a little bit and because at the end of the day, it was over 19,000 feet. When we got to the top
[00:09:20] Joe: and you're on Kentucky that'd be
[00:09:24] John: yeah, we've I think I think Kentucky like where I'm at right now is about 1,000 feet above Ground above sea level, right?
[00:09:31] Joe: That'd be rough. Oh, that'd be rough.
[00:09:33] John: So funny story about that, though, funny story about that. I had to train, you know, I was training for elevation. So I got an elevation mask. So I could just limit my my oxygen and when you wear it, you look like Bane from the Batman movies. And so I would at night, I would always go to work. Do my thing and my wife would go to bed. That's when I would go
[00:09:53] John: for long. I just take long walks, I walked five to eight miles and I would put this Bane mask on with a big black backpack. And just walk up and down the streets at like 10:00 at night. And so, people were like, kind of freaked out. And one day one night, I'm walking in this, police officer pulls up beside me and has a blue lights on. I'm like, what is going on?
[00:10:14] John: He goes sir. What are you doing? And I was like, I'm training for this hike from out. Kilimanjaro, told him what was going on? Oh that's awesome. I was like yeah he goes we've gotten six phone calls tonight about the strange man. Walking around the neighborhood with a mask on. Now it now today wearing a mask isn't gonna surprise anybody, right? Because of the, because everything's happened the last two years but
[00:10:39] John: back then, in was that 2016? People were freaked out so it was just really funny really
[00:10:48] Joe: know. I, you know, it shows shows my ignorance, I didn't know that was like a thing that you could trade it at high elevation by like Yeah, oxygen.
[00:10:56] John: Yes. It's just a Max that you put on and it's got different Regulators that you can, you can put on it and they limit how much Oxygen actually gets into the mask. Wow. And
[00:11:05] John: so you can, you can set up for the different elevations. and so, I trained at about, I think I set mine for 20 because I know it's going to be above 19. So I figured if I trained 20, I'd be okay. And it was brutal. Sometimes there were times you just had to take the mask off and breathe. I can
[00:11:22] Joe: imagine. Yeah. I mean I assumed it helped you made it up the mountain. So
[00:11:29] John: yeah I did I I did a lot of study. Just did a lot of study Backpacker magazine had actually come out with an article about how to handle elevation sickness. And it was like two months before I left and so I basically did everything it said, like to the T and I was one of the few people on our group that didn't get any elevation sickness. I got a touch of a
[00:11:51] John: headache at the summit and that was it.
[00:11:54] Joe: Yeah, I feel I've dealt with elevations sickness. We've been talking about it at the office here with Jason and Brigham will actually have a podcast out. They have some I guess they have some kind of guidelines and dealing with it, but I have gone. Above the two high elevation climbs that I've ever attempted and they were not even nearly as high as like King speaking here in Utah was like 135
[00:12:21] John: still tall, that's still really high
[00:12:24] Joe: and then Mount Elbert, which is above 14,000 feet. Both times I got like a quarter mile from the top and got violently sick. Oh
[00:12:35] Joe: yeah. No, so I didn't Summit either of them. I just like got there. Got sick walked that down and tried to, because I got sick on Kings Peak. I was like, okay, Mount Albert. I'm gonna go there for a few days, in a climatize to, you know, over 10,000 feet, which is where the campsite is, didn't help? Oh, man. But I didn't get much sleep. There's a whole bunch of things that
[00:12:56] Joe: like could have contributed but maybe I'll have to buy one of those masks and just like start depriving myself.
[00:13:03] John: Teach yourself not to breathe. Yeah. Honestly, it was our whole there were 16 of us that went on that trip that were on that trip. All 16 made it to the summit. Oh, different people. Like we had one guy that got violently sick one day but he's body adjusted by the time it was a summit day, he was better. And then As we had a lady, who was, I think 69 years
[00:13:31] John: old. She had broken her wrist. A month or two before the trip. And she made it all the way up. Wow. So I keep telling people a fat guy and a 69 year old woman made it up to the top of Kilimanjaro. Nobody else has excuses that they can do it. You can do it. That's right.
[00:13:50] Joe: So when did you decide to start a YouTube channel about backpacking and you're talking about your podcast earlier? Wouldn't you decide to go about doing that?
[00:14:01] John: It's a funny story. Actually, I am. When I did the shelter, we Trace again, partnered with life water. And this time, it wasn't as heavy of a commitment, it was just me and a buddy who is another Backpacker. And we decided to do this to see if we could raise the money to help out and all I was doing, was vlogging the trail for people who were supporting me. There was no
[00:14:22] John: real I was no real plan to do a YouTube channel. I just created this channel called it JK is hiking because I'm JK and I was hiking and Videos were terrible. I'm just gonna shoot straight like I tried I was trying to be like Darwin or something, you know, I'm like trying to have the really good music. It was they were garbage and button. One of the videos I'm hiking along and
[00:14:45] John: I made the statement that I'm a real Backpacker not. So I just pooped in the woods. And Dan Becker of all people. He was, I think 1,000 or 2000 subscribers at the time. Oh wow.
[00:14:57] John: He saw the video and he thought it was hilarious and he left a comment. And which I've always cool because I've been watching this Channel and I was like, I was kind of a little bit of a fan of his. And later on, I was on Facebook and a friend of mine and him were friends in common. I found out that Dan lived in Kenosha. Wisconsin. I used to live in Kenosha
[00:15:18] John: Wisconsin for four years and we had a friend in common. So I was like, I'm just gonna shoot him a message and so I shot Dan a message said, Hey, how do you know? So and so and that immediately I mean he wasn't like 30 seconds he responded. And we started chatting and he gave me his phone number. We talked for an hour on the phone and he's the one that in
[00:15:37] John: all honesty. He's the one that convinced me, I needed to start a YouTube channel. I wasn't even gonna start one, I was gonna do the Shelby tracing be done because I was like when I was talking to Dan, I think I had 30 subscribers if a video got 100 views, I was over the moon freaking out, you know, and Dan just kind of convinced me and helped me out when I put
[00:15:57] John: out my first video he made sure he put something about it on his channel and Just kind of went from there so really the channel wasn't something I planned on it's just something that kind of happened.
[00:16:06] Joe: How long have you been doing this?
[00:16:09] John: Uh, the channel started in 2019, I mean? The first time I actually did, anything was 2019, the trail videos were like in 2018 but when I actually took it seriously was in 2019.
[00:16:21] Joe: Okay so yeah Dan's blowing up since then for sure a little bit
[00:16:26] Joe: we we went on
[00:16:29] John: she had I was she had more personality that he
[00:16:33] Joe: Went on a camping trip with. A few months ago. So I got to meet him. He is a fun guy. He's a lot of fun. He's always in a chipper mood. I get a like, talk shop with his camera guy over there. So that was nice. Yeah, yeah, we had a good time with Dan, so it's cool. Everybody's intermingling here.
[00:16:55] John: It's funny with that, too. Because Dan then gives me Jeremiah stringer's phone number. He says, call Jeremiah up and I'm like, freaking out at this point because like these are two of the guys, I watched on YouTube all the time, was Jeremiah and Dan. So I I called Jeremiah and he goes, hey, I can't talk right now but I'm driving down to Nashville someone to do the Long Trail. Um, so give
[00:17:16] John: me a call and we'll talk while I'm driving to the airport. I'm like, okay, we don't talk in the entire ride down to the airport like the entire three hours. and then we started, we we did a couple trips together and decided to do a podcast and yes, it's all this like Everybody kind of knows each other. The outdoor Community is not that big in all honesty. It's amazing. How intermingling and everything is.
[00:17:38] Joe: I think it's it's Bigger than we think it is, but I'm wondering how many people are both like outdoorsy and all so creative and in the way in which they want to make a video and spend hours and hours. That's true
[00:17:50] Joe: building, that kind of content. So I was definitely like, I enjoy backpacking. I grew up in scouting. I have attempted to throw hike. That I failed miserably on which one was it? It was like the bottom of the trail. It's just a trail that like, skirts, the Wasatch Front of northern Utah. It's like okay, 200 miles long, I was 300 pounds. When I started that thing and I lasted about two days
[00:18:17] Joe: and it was lost, then
[00:18:20] John: 100 pounds. That's awesome man.
[00:18:24] Joe: Thank you. It wasn't mostly. It was mostly died. It wasn't High. I wish that hiking.
[00:18:29] John: Who cares? How you lost it, man? I'm just 100 pounds. That's incredible.
[00:18:33] Joe: Thank you. Thank. It's been many years. It's been very slowly lost over time but that was like the Beginning of it. I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna start this hike and I'm gonna start my weight loss Journey because I had ballooned up to some like 300 pounds, right? And for me, I'm pretty short guy. That's legitimately like huge
[00:18:52] John: and we have 105 pounds, two years ago. So I get you, man. I totally get you, I gained I gained a bunch of weight when covid happened,
[00:18:59] Joe: I gained a little I can't wait. Yeah.
[00:19:03] Joe: Yeah, it's difficult. Not to with Kobe. Yeah.
[00:19:07] Joe: But anyway, I was, I was hired here as an Entertainer. I do podcasts and then I also make videos like I first have like a filmmaker so I made like short films and whole bunch of stuff and, like, I enjoy backpacking. I'm learning so much. Backpacking stuff. So it's quite the opposite for me, like, the people who are doing really well on YouTube like, you or Dan. All these like backpacking guys.
[00:19:34] Joe: They are I think Backpackers first that YouTube is
[00:19:37] John: second almost. Well it's funny. I actually work at a church and I've been doing videos for years. There you go. Um but I was doing over
[00:19:45] John: bad videos for years and so, doing the YouTube channels, actually taught me so much. Like I started out, I was using a flip camera, you know, the flip cameras from back in the day ever see those
[00:19:57] Joe: they have literally just one.
[00:19:59] John: They were little like rectangle with a camera lens on it, basically in a button and then you had a USB port that would pop out the side. And that was the video camera. Okay. Yeah,
[00:20:10] John: that's what. That's what I started working on that. And I had a Sony Cyber-shot. Like little camera and those were the things that I filmed stuff on. They were terrible, everything looked awful. And then I decided I was gonna do YouTube. I had a buddy, he was a photographer and I was like, okay fill me in. Tell me what I need to know, because I know nothing like I hear words, like
[00:20:30] John: ISO and that's stopped and I'm going, I don't know what any of this stuff is. And so, I had a buddy taught me all that stuff explained lighting to me and sound and it was just Just kind of got lucky. I had the right people around me to help me out with it because I look at some of my early videos I just cringe you know, the GoPro. Trail videos. Were pretty rough. Yeah, I
[00:20:53] Joe: I don't know, like Obviously like your backgrounds way cooler than mine. I'm just like here in my apartment quickly set this up. Covering up all the video games stuff behind me. So it looks a little bit more backpacking. But like, I see, like,
[00:21:10] John: you're like your red lighting there with all the backpacking supplies behind you. I think that's pretty cool.
[00:21:16] Joe: That's a pretty cool setup. And I like the way your videos look a lot when you're filming in your garage. Appreciate that.
[00:21:22] John: Yeah, what's funny is? It's in my garage. Like, it's amazing how many people like I've got, I've got this brick wall thing. I drop down, you know, just have a different background every once in a while. People like, where are you with that brick wall? I'm thinking myself. Oh, here comes Mama, they're gonna find out. I'm a big fake. It's a fake Break wall, you know, but I started at Outdoor Vitals.
[00:21:41] John: They have like this wood panel wall anybody's listening. He's
[00:21:45] Joe: watched the YouTube videos. It's just like this wood panel, took me months to figure out how to light in that room, just because it's just a blank wood panel wood. Slats are not level with the floor.
[00:21:57] John: So, I can't like level the camera off and the wood slat. So, I always have to go in like
[00:22:03] Joe: crop it. And then there was always a bunch of junk in the room. I just barely clear this stuff out, so he's always had to be like up against the wall. So, it was like, it's really bright thing. If you see the videos in, like,
[00:22:13] John: you got Shadows directly behind them, because you're too close to the wall.
[00:22:16] Joe: I mean, there's there's a whole bunch. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of problems with the lighting in that space. They love this. This would slap thing, and I came into work for him and I'm like, I hate this would slap. So like I tried like, just like, putting a bunch of like, you know, a bunch of Outdoor Vitals like backpacks and stuff. And it just like look messy. And I'm like, I
[00:22:37] Joe: can't figure this out what? I, I had to figure like, literally, like the last three weeks have, I figured out how to light in that stupid space. Like, you'll see, that's the brand new videos, like Jason's gonna be way far away from that wall, so that the light is just like kind of falling onto the wall but not lighting it so that Taysond as much brighter than the background is like, oh
[00:23:00] Joe: my goodness, but I had to, like, pull a whole bunch of stuff out of the room and in order to get that thing to, like, look the way where I was like, okay, this looks like, I might be a professional, it might know what I'm doing, it's not just, oh yeah, a whole bunch of whole bunch of fun stuff with with figuring out how to, I guess film.
[00:23:21] John: Yeah, I hear that.
[00:23:23] Joe: So What are your future backpacking plans? This moment of time,
[00:23:32] John: the big one this year is a buddy. You're gonna be doing the Virginia Triple Crown. Hitting three of the big spots along the at which is dragons, tooth, Tinker Cliffs and McAfee knob. It's like, it's not a huge long hike or anything, but it's just a really cool hike. It's like, 36 miles. I think we're gonna do that one weekend and then it's just kind of open. I'm going to be down
[00:23:56] John: in the Linville gorge in North Carolina at some point. In the spring. I got a buddy, we're gonna be getting together to hike down there. I'll be doing a ton of stuff in the River Gorge when you got something like that nearby. It's just you take advantage of it. So if you doing a lot there, I try to get into at least five different states a year. So that's only my goal
[00:24:18] John: is five states. I barely got it in last year. But this year, I really want to get out west. I've never hiked out. West, never really want to know. I need to get out to Utah. California.
[00:24:29] Joe: It's Quite different more. I would say, Rocky, and rugged, more bare. And also way higher elevation? Yeah, yeah.
[00:24:43] Joe: So you gotta be ready with your. You gotta get your oxygen depriving.
[00:24:48] John: It'll be nice. Not having to Kentucky humidity though, man. You've never experienced humidity to you've experienced humidity in the South man, it's unreal.
[00:24:56] Joe: I can attest to that, I have family in the South. I've gone visiting quite a bit, but there's also the opposite where after you're used to some humidity, you come out to specifically Utah and Nevada and Colorado like really dry States. You go out there and it just feels like the moisture has been like sucked away from your skin. And so it's I look forward to trying that. Yeah
[00:25:20] Joe: so you'll just be, I don't know. You might feel like dry it out like you're just like roasting in the Sun. even though I think actually, like I don't even I don't even know if the feeling of like being burnt by the sun is Mrs. I'm a redhead. So I have to worry about oh yeah.
[00:25:36] Joe: If it's nearly like, if it actually matters whether or not, you know, there's humidity in the air, I've heard like more water in the air basically like amplifies the light, but I don't know,
[00:25:46] John: I don't know about that. That
[00:25:50] Joe: I can work. I have no idea. But you might you might feel like I don't know like a fried piece of bacon out here.
[00:25:56] John: Yeah who knows? One of. That's why I know the desert just really looks interesting and I want to do I want to do the oh, what is it called? Hate it, when I think of the name of a trail I want to do. It's in Utah. Got The High Line, you
[00:26:13] John: went to high you into you went to Highline Trail. Yeah. That's the one I would like to check out. You went to Highline Trail.
[00:26:18] Joe: Yeah. Um the guys
[00:26:19] John: tried it last year. Yeah, they they made it.
[00:26:25] Joe: A good chunk of the way in and then got snowed out and then had to had to leave.
[00:26:29] John: Oh, middle of August.
[00:26:32] Joe: Snow storm. You don't
[00:26:33] John: get that in Kentucky, man. We don't get snowed out in February in Kentucky. So,
[00:26:37] Joe: it's pretty rare here. Unless you're in love, really high elevation, which that's kind of, the kind of the highest elevation area in Utah's. Yeah, it's gonna be more common in Colorado or something like that. That's freak. Winter storms in the middle of summer. Oh, I know yeah so I mean Yeah, poor guys, I think they are going to try to attempt it again. I will I will not say they are definitely
[00:27:03] Joe: going to do so on a podcast. But I will say that there are a lot of
[00:27:08] John: Rumblings in the office about giving it another go on the Highline Trail, so that's awesome.
[00:27:15] Joe: Yeah, it looks like an amazing experience. I've gone and hiked up and you went as a little bit obviously with King speak but and it's it's a, it's really cool up there. Like it's an amazing just The views are incredible. Really cool area. What? What are your favorite backpacking trips? What, when I asked you your favorite backpacking trip outside of Mount Kilimanjaro. Let's say we already covered that one. What first pots
[00:27:46] Joe: into your head? I have it's not gonna sound like one that most
[00:27:50] John: people think of it I went down to Alabama. And hiked out there. And I think because I was so shocked by it. Is why I like is why I think about it, but that's a hike part of the pinhoti trail down there on Cheaha mountain and it was just a really cool hike. I when I think of Alabama, all I think of as humidity and hot and tornadoes so like I don't
[00:28:14] John: think of I don't think of mountains and Views and Vistas and waterfalls, but that's exactly what I saw and it was really a cool hike. It wasn't like a big long thing. It was only three days, but It was a good trip and then another one would be pictured rocks up in Michigan. I went up there this past year and got to do that. It's like a 45. I think it's 45
[00:28:36] John: miles. And we, we took our time with that. I think we did it over like five days but the views out there, insane. I mean, you're over Lake Superior and it's The water was like this perfect like blue green color and you could see straight through to the rocks at the bottom of it, and I was just a perfect. It was picture us like nobody ever gets the hike it in that
[00:29:00] John: kind of weather. Usually everybody talks about the black flies and humidity and it's it's awful but it's beautiful and we had the Beauty and the good weather and no black flies. So it was awesome.
[00:29:11] Joe: Sorry window what season did you go down there? Like when did you
[00:29:13] John: down there may last year? Okay,
[00:29:16] John: so that's up in the upper peninsula. So that's like practically Canada.
[00:29:19] Joe: Okay. So you probably like, Flies are probably a few weeks behind.
[00:29:25] John: Yeah, I think so. I think you're right. I think they start, I think they, I think people were complaining about the week after we were there which is really funny.
[00:29:32] Joe: I assume like May. I've never hiked up that far north. I assume me is probably pretty like chili.
[00:29:39] John: It wasn't bad. I mean, I think it, I think it got up to around. 70 during the day. I think the coldest it ever got was in the 40s. It wasn't terrible.
[00:29:50] Joe: Okay. Yeah. That's not a bad range. Yeah.
[00:29:54] Joe: Well, that's cool. What? Do you have any bucket list trips like
[00:29:59] John: do you ever want to like, try the at or anything like that? If I try to At Last to be after my kids are out of the house and my wife's tired of me so that I would like to, I would love to do it. I don't know if I have, if I could do six months, I probably have to do like Like a month or two and then do it next
[00:30:19] John: year doing a month or two, or something like that, I'd be able to do six. of course, it doesn't always take every six months, either a lot of people's like four or five months but what I'm just assuming the longer but I want to do the John Muir Trail really bad. I wanted to John Mayer Trail that's that's one. I definitely want to hit up. I definitely I really would like to
[00:30:38] John: hit you in a Hyde Highline Trail. I got to watch a movie about that, not long ago, a couple years ago. And ever since seeing that movie is just kind of like, I really would like to do that trail
[00:30:48] Joe: but the one that just just called hyaline. Yeah,
[00:30:52] Joe: yeah, okay, yeah. It made me watch it when I started working here.
[00:30:55] John: Oh yeah. Actually got to talk to the director of the movie and super nice guy and yeah, I'd love to do that. I would like to do the Long Trail up in Vermont, the original Long Trail. Yeah, there's and there's a bunch of little Trails here and there. I'd like to do, but those three would probably be three of the big ones I'd like to do awesome. Yeah, I want to do
[00:31:17] John: the John Muir as well.
[00:31:18] Joe: I don't know what the situation is like permit situation or anything like that over in California
[00:31:25] John: like a lottery thing or something. Or
[00:31:27] Joe: I must say it. Probably is just because like in that state when something's popular it's just like you gotta You gotta wait, you gotta wait. Yeah. But where so tell me, John, where can people find you?
[00:31:44] John: I mean you find me on YouTube youtube.com slash I think it's JK is hiking and then I'm on Instagram, John Kelly YouTube and its Keel ey which is important because if you don't spell that you won't find me. The backpacking podcast, you always find me on the backpacking podcast and those are probably the best ways you can find me online.
[00:32:08] Joe: Awesome. Well, thank you John, for making time and coming on here. Sorry tasting couldn't join us today.
[00:32:15] John: That's okay, man. I'll just take it personally.
[00:32:20] Joe: I appreciate you. You know, come here and talk with me
[00:32:23] John: and that's all good. It's been fun.
[00:32:25] Joe: And guys, if you have any comments questions about backpacking, cool outdoor stories or ideas for future episode topics, we might just read it on the show and you can send those to live Ultra Lite podcast at gmail.com or you can comment on our little budding YouTube channel, live Ultra Lite podcast on YouTube. And also, we will read your positive iTunes reviews that you that you submit their. So if you could do
[00:32:54] Joe: that, that'd be awesome. And guys links to all of Outdoor Vitals, Awesome ultralight. Backpacking. Gear will be in the description of this podcast and in the description of the YouTube videos, guys. Thank you. Once again for joining and we will see you on the trail.
