Meet the 91-Year-Old Hiking the Appalachian Trail

The first time I hiked the Appalachian Trail at 82 years old, well, it certainly changed my life. I'm telling you, I'm going to do it again. I've been really fortunate in my 37 years with the Navy Parks and Recreation. But when I retired, I never looked back. I started doing things that I've been thinking about my whole life because every day was Saturday except Sunday. I went to church on Sundays. Today, I'm hiking at the top of Mount Lafayette in New Hampshire. Right now, we're about probably close to halfway up. So if we can get up there before the rain's at 1 o'clock, I'll be a happy camper. It's beautiful. Yeah, I like the outdoors. I feel when I'm in the woods and the sun is shining, I'm in my best mood. I'm not knocking a gym, but you have to get outside. Aaron, I've been visibly behind you for three or four weeks. You're kidding me. I'm thrilled to meet you. Well, thank you. And I was wondering if I could, would you mind, would you mind getting a, can I take a selfie? Just do it. I don't want to bother you. Meeting people on the trail is really exciting. That's very motivating, the recognition. And so every time I've gotten some form of age record, I think it probably added years to my life. As the support team for Dale, we plan how many miles he's going to do, you know, tomorrow, the next day, the next day, and where those crossroads are, where I'm going to meet him, and we convoy. We're just really good friends with Dale. Once he told us, if you want to keep going and live in a good life, just keep setting yourself a new goal. When he asked us, would you be trail angels for me? Gosh, how could we say no? Okay, we love you. Yeah. Bye-bye. Take care, buddy. Take care. See ya. They've been so wonderful. We can talk a lot about the physical demand on the trail. It's really significant. But I can tell you right now, it is very mentally difficult, too. It's so nice to, you know, at my age especially, when you're walking through the mountains all day, worried about, am I going to stay alive? You walk out and there's somebody there to greet you. There's the summit! Oh, thank God. My gracious. Lafayette. The summit. Oh, my gracious. Oh, look at the view. 1,900 miles. Only got 300 left to do. It is very different being old, but at the same time, there's a reward to it. What am I going to do in my later years? Oh, I'm going to keep doing this kind of stuff. And I think I'll go into old age with a good attitude about it. I'm not going to stop.