Wow, thanks very much, Kevon!

There are a lot of different types and styles of trail journals; mine are pretty verbose. Like many I think, I write primarily for myself and immediate family and friends. I think my journals work well for those that like a more complete day-to-day documentation, with accurate location data. I'm sure that my "style" of writing is not best for everyone (!).

Because the "best" trail journals will vary according to the tastes of the readers. There was a thread on whiteblaze.net earlier this year about good trail journals to read, so a person looking for good journals could have a look at that.

One journal that I suggest is Lil' Budda's journal for this past year --- what he did was truly awesome, hiking from the southern end of Florida to join to the AT, doing the AT, then continuing on the International AT into Canada. Lil' Budda is a great guy (I met him at Trail Days in Damascus), and IMO writes a fun and funny journal.

FWIW, Lil' Budda plans to do the CDT next year too (not with me), but in his usual fashion he plans to do MORE than just the CDT (I don't recall details, maybe continuing on into Canada).

Lesson (for me at least): there's always someone out there who's tougher and more audacious. More power to him!

Another thought about selecting journals: the site that my journal is on (postholer.com) tends to have a lot more PCT journals, so for folks interested in PCT blogs a good thing about postholer is that you can search for journals based on hit count (called there "journal visits"). I.e., look for the journals that a lot of other people are reading. I don't think you can do that on trailjournals.com, though of course TJ has a whole lot more people posting there.

Anyway, thanks for the kind words, Kevon.