We're never doing this again.

Continued from A Summer to Remember in 2024.

For the second year in a row, we set out to hike 100 miles during our Summer to Remember challenge. We don't exactly know why we thought this would be a good idea. Last year, we practically melted on most of the trails. By Labor Day Weekend, we were scrounging for our remaining miles, sweating our trail-trekking-tushies off, and questioning our life choices. This year, when the time came to plan our summer, we seemed to have forgotten all of that misery. We were like Lewis Black finding candy corn each Halloween and forgetting how much he hates it, only we're blissfully ignorant about the poor taste that the summer heat can leave in our mouths.

via GIPHY

We thought that traveling through the Midwest and Northeast wouldn't be as bad as the Wyoming desert. Plus, our stormy and therefore sedentary spring urged us to get on our feet as much as possible. We took a leap and put "100 miles of hiking" back on the list. We even added some specific hikes that we aimed to hit during our summer travels.

The rules were the same as last year: The hikes had to be on a designated trail, and Anthony and I both had to hike every trail together.

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We had a slow start, thanks to our first week being in an Airbnb not near any trails. We didn't take our first hike until we were back in our rig and west of Chicago. The county park where we stayed had several trails, and so we clocked a couple of miles the morning before we left. It was the only clear-ish day in a bout of rainstorms, so even though the weather was humid and the ground was muddy, we knew we needed to take what we could get. On the plus side, the trails offered a little bit of elevation gain and some flowers and cicadas to keep us entertained.

This hike kickstarted a thematic summer of hiking. The theme? Heat, humidity, and bugs. Most days were so bad, we actually longed for the dry desert heat. The springtime storms also continued well into the summer. Some days, we hiked in the rain because we didn't have a choice, but when the weather was more severe, all we could do was hang tight.

We did, of course, have some moments of reprieve. The first one came in Door County, Wisconsin. One whole week after our first hike, we took our second. The morning rain cleared and we had a beautiful (albeit humid) late afternoon hike at Newport State Park. The trail here gifted us views of Lake Michigan and some adorable deer, but the highlight for us was catching the yellow lady's slippers in bloom.

Other Door County hikes included a couple of trails at Peninsula State Park, and two treks of the mile loop at Ellison Bluff State Natural Area. The Eagle Trail at Peninsula State Park was the first hike that felt truly legitimate. We planned the hike ahead of time, packed a bag, saw some sights and cool rock formations, and got a good workout. Ellison Bluff was the park closest to our campground. The mile-long loop ventures through the woods, but the parking area offers a beautiful view of Green Bay. Our first hike was in the late afternoon, when we topped off an ebike ride with the short hike. The next day, we took Tanner at sunset, hiking the loop before soaking in the spectacular view.

Door County gave us an energy boost. Finally, we had made a dent in our challenge and had captured some of nature's beauty. Our next stop was the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where we looked forward to some gorgeous trails.

We had heard so many great things about the UP, including the mild temperatures in the summer. Unfortunately, we continued to battle storms, and the humidity was out of control. Most days, we couldn't walk outside for 5 minutes without sweating through our clothes. With the mugginess came the bugginess! We did the best we could, managing one climb up Sugarloaf Mountain and several waterfall hikes. The waterfall hikes had two things in common: 1, they were ROARING due to all the recent rainfall. 2, they had lots of stairs, giving some oomph to an otherwise easy hike.

Then we made our way east and camped at Straits State Park, right on the Straits of Mackinac. This state park had some nice trails right from the campground loops. We always appreciate this, especially when we're challenging ourselves to tackle a bunch of miles. We saw some great views of the Mackinac Bridge from these trails.

By the time we entered Michigan's Lower Peninsula, we had only clocked 18 miles. July was coming fast. So, we scrounged around for hikes wherever we could, including at a rest area on the side of the highway!

From here, the hikes dwindled a bit. We were busy enjoying the Traverse City Cherry Fest, which included other adventures like a bike ride and 5k. We only hiked 2 miles in the first week of July. This meant we had a lot of catching up to do as we made our way through the Lower Peninsula. To deplete our morale even more, we now had last year as a comparison point. Due to the heat, July was not very productive last year, but we had still clocked way more miles than we had by this point this year. We knew we couldn't be wimps anymore; we had to battle the elements if we wanted to make true strides in this challenge.

After a few hikes from our various state park campgrounds, we found ourselves in Huron-Manistee National Forest, camping at Lumberman's Monument. All Trails recommended the Highbanks Trail, a hiking and XC skiing trail that we could access from the visitor's center. The weather was gross. The sun felt extra hot beating through the thick, humid air, and the mosquitoes were relentless. I couldn't even put the bug spray away or else more would swarm around my head. Next time we go to Michigan, we're buying ourselves some bug nets. If it weren't for these less-than-ideal circumstances, we would have quite enjoyed this hike. It had some nice views, interesting features, and a mixture of terrains.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the only hike where we had to pack Deet to save our lives. National Forests were not our friend, as we learned after we made our way east and ended up in Finger Lakes National Forest. Another would-be beautiful hike on Burnt Hill and Interlaken Trails, we ventured through woods and flower fields. But the bugs were unwelcome hiking buddies.

Fortunately, our time in the Finger Lakes brought us some gems. We hiked Glen Gorge in Watkins Glen and purposely went early in the morning to beat the crowds. This also helped us beat the heat. Later in the week, we braved the heat for some waterfall hikes and a couple more gorge trails.

We prioritized hiking in the Finger Lakes, which meant some gorge-ous hikes, but it also meant hitting the less wooded and therefore hotter trails behind our campsite. We were dry camping at Watkins Glen, so we had to keep our water usage low and limit our showers. Dry camping and humidity-induced sweat fests are not a good combination.

We agreed that if we hiked even 10 miles in the Finger Lakes, this would be an accomplishment, but 20 would put us in great shape. We ended up clocking almost 21.5 miles that week! We left New York with renewed hope that we could actually complete all 100 miles. We had now passed the halfway point, with a total of 52 miles under our feet. However, we needed the New England weather to cooperate, and we know far too well that that is not its strong suit.

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We hit the ground hard as soon as we got to New England, hiking two of our most difficult trails all year: Lye Brook Falls in Vermont and Mount Greylock in Massachusetts. As usual, the humidity was awful and the bugs were worse. We tried to be smart and do our Greylock hike earlier in the day, but we were the first ones on trail, which meant being the spider web whackers. The humidity made us sweat so much that the webs kept sticking to us. I eventually had to rinse myself off with one of our water bottles. This was definitely a low point in the challenge. We had been totally beat down by the weather, hadn't trekked terrain this challenging in months, and here we were attempting to hike a trail that's been on our bucket list for years and couldn't even enjoy it. Thank goodness for a big payoff at the end. We had hiked the highest point in MA and were rewarded with the views.

Our final stretch would be on familiar ground. We headed back to the South Shore of Massachusetts, where we used to live. We set up camp at Wompatuck State Park, knowing that we would have ample trails right from our doorstep. Now, we just needed nice weather. After a few days of rain, the air dried and temperatures cooled. Our goal was to try and hike 2 miles each day we had nice enough weather. Slowly but surely, we inched toward our goal. We motivated ourselves by making t-shirts with our mantra.

This area is close to the ocean, so while we have some hills, rocks, and glacial erratics, the terrain is much easier than the mountainous parts of New England. Now that we had ample training and our hiker legs were strong, we were able to bang out multi-mile hikes with no issue. We always feel the nostalgia when we hit the trails near where we used to live. Back then, we got sick of visiting these same parks over and over again. Now, we have a renewed affection for them. Sometimes it's hard to see what we've got until we're away for a while, but these parks are lovely. We were lucky to have these beautiful landscapes so close by when we lived here.

Labor Day Weekend was only a few days away, and we'd be heading to Long Island to visit Anthony's family, so we planned to hike our final miles before we left. We attempted a couple of hikes in our final week, but a heatwave had returned, and we had maxed out on our tolerance. We checked the forecast and saw that the weather would cool again by the end of the week, and so we waited. Then, the Thursday before Labor Day Weekend, it was time to lay this challenge to rest.

We had a park in mind for our finale hike, but the trail is short and would only give us a mile or two. We needed six. So we added some local trails to a hat and randomly selected two of them. We aimed to do two miles at each location. This would give us lots of breaks and would let us visit more local parks that we hadn't been to in years. The hat draws were good ones: Norris Reservation, which runs along the North River in Norwell, MA, and More-Brewer Park, a lesser-known reservation in Hingham with fields, forests, and a pond.

A lot of improvements had been made at Norris since the last time we went. This year's rain must have made the ground pretty muddy, because now the trails had a lot more bog bridges and stepping stones. However, the rain also made the foliage and flowers incredibly lush.

We were a little nervous to hike More-Brewer later in the afternoon because the standing water of the pond could increase mosquito activity, but we barely encountered bugs. We were also the only people in the reservation, and the forest was delightfully peaceful. We heard lots of birds and insects, plus a distant owl. We reminisced about our hikes there years ago and the conversations we've had on the trails.

Then, to complete our challenge, we went to our beloved peninsula in our old hometown of Weymouth, Webb Memorial State Park. Nestled between the Back and Fore Rivers with views of Hingham Bay and Boston Harbor, this is one of our local happy places. The entire outer loop is just about a mile, but we added a smaller, elevated loop that offers views of the beach. This extra loop gave us our 100th mile...plus and extra tenth for good measure.

For the second year in a row, we finished the challenge feeling torn. We love the excitement to be active and adventurous. We love working towards a goal. 100 miles never seems like a tough feat until we factor in the weather and how busy we get this time of year. As good as the discipline is, we always end up feeling forced to do our "challenge activity" whenever we have the opportunity. We forgo other activities to hike miles upon miles. On nice days, we often choose to hike anyway, but sometimes we just want to put down our patio and lounge around. Sometimes we want to go somewhere local like a botanical garden, or even mini golfing. We realized that if we keep adding this challenge to our Summer to Remember lists, we might end up resenting hiking instead of enjoying our summer hikes. We had many discussions on trail about next year, factoring in where we plan to be in the summer. Where we're going, the weather will be unpredictable and likely rainy and humid. We do not want to set ourselves up for misery once again. We're proud of ourselves for completing this challenge two years in a row, but next year, we'll need to make some changes.

We hope that the takeaways from this challenge will be all the beautiful places we set our feet and all the amazing things we got to see.

Green Bay:

Lake Michigan:

Lake Superior:

Miners Castle at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore:

The Mighty Mac:

Lake Huron:

A lighthouse:

A wanigan replica:

Kinzua Skywalk:

Glen Gorge:

The summit of Mt. Greylock:

More deer than we can count:

Over a dozen waterfalls:

We will certainly cherish these memories, but hopefully not too much. When next summer rolls around, we want to remember our reasons for not doing this challenge. Our love of hiking depends on it!