Well, in case you have never actually met Rich and Cindy Cram and have only heard about them through this blog, you are really missing out on two of the most amazing people on the planet.  I cannot say thank you enough.  This couple has not only headed up the resupply process of all of my trail hikes, they have been some of my closest friends. 

Rich and Cindy offered to drive me up to the trailhead in Waterton Lakes, Alberta, Canada as a way of being an even bigger part of my journey and I'm pretty excited because we are all going to hike in to the border together.  It will be great to have them start the trail with me since they have been such a huge behind the scenes presence.  Cindy mails the resupply boxes and packs extra goodies in there and Rich keeps up the blog and is my technical advisor.  They are the first ones that I call when I get into town, after the pizza place of course. :)


So thank you Rich and Cindy for all of the support and love that you have given to me, you are truly God's trail angels.

So I decided to go ahead and apply for my permit in advance in hopes that I would be sure of getting the itinerary that I wanted, but a lot of life is about not getting what you want and learning to be happy and excited about what you actually get.  I  was hoping to be able to start at the Waterton Lake terminus, but they gave me one that starts at Chief Mountain instead.  Overall its not a big deal, I understand that the Waterton Lake entry leads to the highline trail, which will undoubtedly have a ton of snow on it and could be seen as being dangerous, but I tried to non-pretentiously state that I had done the PCT southbound and am no stranger to snow, but it didn't seem to make a difference to them.  I am still planning to give them a call the week before I leave and see if it might be possible to actually still do the highline trail since there will be a more accurate idea of how much snow will actually be up there.
I don't regret applying in advance, but I don't know if it was worth the extra money since I didn't get what I wanted anyway.  I will be happy with whatever though, it would probably be more pleasurable to do it later in the summer some other time anyways.