I came across this book in a random Goodreads list one day, while searching for another book, and decided it looked like a good one to get in at some stage. And what an interesting story it turned out to be! I’d heard about the Appalachian Trail before reading this book; an acquaintance hiked part of it quite a few years back, I believe. But I’ve always wondered what it would be like to take on such a big undertaking, and to see this attempted by an entire family is something else again! I was sucked into the Crawford’s story from the get-go and enjoyed following along on this journey with them.

There were things I didn’t appreciate so much; I don’t agree with some of their beliefs and didn’t appreciate the language in the book. For those two reasons, I almost put the book down without finishing it several times, but each time I came back to it because I really wanted to know how it all ended up for them.

In the end, this was a challenging, inspiring read. It made me want to get out and do some hiking of my own, even though I’m one of the laziest, least-active people I know! I wouldn’t recommend this book to a teenage or younger audience, because some of the content is more on an adult level. I’m not sad I read it, overall, but due to parts of the content, I don’t feel like I can recommend it as highly as other books. ( )