TravelAwaits
Jun.28.2021
Looking for that next adventure? If you live on the U.S. east coast, you may not have to look much farther than right in your own backyard.
There is a hiking trail that travels through 16 states, beginning at the Big Cypress National Preserve in Ochopee, Florida, ending some 5,400-miles away in Cape Gaspe’, Canada. It’s a trail that isn’t a trail but rather, a combination of seven east coast long-distance hiking trails that together form the Eastern Continental Trail or ECT.
Only a few hearty souls have made the entire trek on what the Sierra Club calls “a beast of a hike,” but you don’t have to upend your life for a year to experience the beauty and wonder of the trail. Instead, take a day or overnight hike on one of the many trails that make up the ECT – the Florida Trail, Conecuh Trail in Alabama’s Conecuh National Forest, Alabama and Georgia’s Pinhoti Trail, Benton MacKaye Trail in Georgia, the iconic Appalachian Trail (A.T.), an