"Hike your own hike", as the saying goes. You may never catch us through-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), but we're always interested in reading about others' hiking experiences. One book that's been on our radar for a while recently showed up on our doorstep thanks to Read and Share, a series of events put on by Whatcom County Library System (WCLS). It's a book with a strong connection to Bellingham and the local trail community, so we were excited to read and review it.

When traveling outside our home state of Washington, we're often met with a perplexing planning challenge. Without the wonderful Washington Trails Association (WTA) Hike Finder Map at our disposal, where do we turn for quality trail information? We don't typically trust crowd-sourced sites like AllTrails. And most states don't have a resource like the WTA Hike Finder. So, as travelers and hikers have for generations, we turn to guidebooks.

In 2016 we made an announcement: we were researching and writing our first guidebook, Beer Hiking Pacific Northwest. We dropped everything, spent 4 months mostly on the road, and turned in our manuscript in record time. We didn't know details at the time, but we weren't alone in our endeavors. Just a few states away, another first-time author was working with the same publisher to produce a second book in the US beer hiking series: Beer Hiking Colorado.