Welcome to our travel pages!

Ed was born in 1945 and grew up on a dairy farm in southwestern Virginia. Liz was born in 1951 and grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut where she was very active as a Girl Scout and with the Audubon Society. We met while attending Virginia Tech where we were both very active with the VPI Cave Club, as well as participating in backpacking, rock climbing, and paddling. Ed received an MS in Micro Economics and Liz received a BS in Mathematics and after additional classes in accounting passed the CPA exam. We were married in 1972. Over the years we worked at various jobs, including owning and operating our own printing business for eighteen years. Most recently Ed had been working as a part time captain for Charleston Harbor Tours and Liz had been working as an accountant for a local surveying and engineering company.

We have had many years of backpacking experience and trip planning though until the last several years we had been primarily just weekend warriors. We have taught classes on backpacking, trip planning, land navigation, and outdoor safety plus led backpacking trips with Charleston County Parks and Recreation Commission for ten years. We are also Outings Leaders with the Sierra Club, planning and leading backpacking trips, plus started a Backpacking Group under the Sierra Club here in Charleston, SC about eight years ago which is still going strong. Also, we have done several extended backpacking trips on our own, many of which involved extensive planning and logistics. These include the following: (1) Seven day backpack to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa, the highest mountain in Africa at 19,300 feet; (2) Twenty-four day backpack in California, hiking from Mt Whitney (the highest point in the lower 48 states at 15,400 feet) to Badwater, Death Valley (the lowest point in the western hemisphere); (3) Seventeen day backpack in Colorado, hiking a combination of the Continental Divide Trail and the Colorado Trail; and (4) Fourteen day backpack in Arizona, hiking down in the Grand Canyon; plus many additional backopacking trips from weekend trips to week long trips in various places across the USA. Our most recent backpacking adventure was in 2008, walking from the Atlantic Ocean at Isle of Palms, Charleston, SC to the Pacific Ocean at Cliff House, San Francisco, CA. It was a journey of continuous footsteps lasting seven and one-half months and 3364 miles!

Since we have been married we have enjoyed traveling together throughout the USA and occasionally in other countries. Thus far we have visited 46 of the 50 states, as well as traveling in Mexico (1999), Canada (2002), Belize (2002), Costa Rica (2006), and Tanzania (2006). In 1996, Liz and our daughter, Laura, traveled in Europe visiting England, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, and France.

A few years ago we sat down, dreamed about the future, and thought about all of the places we would like to travel to. In doing so we created a "life list" of everywhere we would like to visit and all of the things we would like to accomplish. This list probably contains more than we will be able to achieve but one should always keep their dreams alive whatever they might be. After creating our "life list" we decided to prioritize it. Since some of the adventures on our list required more physical ability than others we thought it best to put those at the top of our list. This prompted us to begin planning our trip to Tanzania to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, 19,300 feet. It is the tallest mountain in the world that can be climbed without technical mountain climbing skills. With the assistance of our guide and porters we had a very successful journey with both of us reaching the summit! It was a very difficult hike and we were glad that we had put it at the top of our list.

The next adventure on our "life list" required considerably more time and logistics. Walking across the country from ocean to ocean was one of those things we planned to do "someday". We had talked about it a lot and done some preliminary planning but didn't know when we would have sufficient enough time to accomplish walking all of the way across the country. However, Liz was laid off in January 2008 and our daughter was married in March 2008. This created the perfect window to begin our journey. Thus we began detailed planning and walked out our back door just eight days after our daughter was married. We then walked southeast for two days to reach the Atlantic Ocean. It would take us seven and one-half months to reach the Pacific Ocean. We kept a daily trail journal about our walk at: www.trailjournals.com/walkingwest08. The theme of our journey was to explore our American heritage by following historical routes and trails. Our walking route took us close to many interesting places but we could not take the time to walk extra miles to see them all. Thus we will be driving west this year, following our walking route and visiting all of those places we had to bypass last year. We will begin this year's travels near the end of March and will keep a travel journal on this site for our journey. If you happened to just stumble onto our site, you can access it and follow our travels by our direct link: www.traveljournals.net/emorgan.