 Guys, great news! I was minding my own business. You know when I say that, good things happen. Clean it up the bus. It's all clean. And I ran into a couple backpackers, Claire and Teddy. Yeah. And repeat or tell me again what you guys are doing exactly. We are hiking the border of Mexico from end to end. We started in San Diego and we'll end all the way over towards Brownsville at the Gulf of Mexico. The burning question everyone wants to know why. Claire? Well, we're big walkers. It's a really good way to see the world. It's a really good way to meet people and this is just an important area. I think it's important to be learning about it and not just living far off from the border and feeling like it doesn't affect you. So we wanted to get involved. We wanted to learn about it. Okay. So is there like a book coming? Is there like you guys mentioned you were blogging a little bit? A lot actually. Yeah. It's every day is about an essay usually but it is getting smaller as the days go by. Gosh. Yeah. We actually run into a problem of there being so much information that we're kind of running across and wanting to like document. Yeah. That we're being really wordy right now in our vlog and trying to like make it a little more concise. No, no, no. Go for length. We're burning out also at the same time. So it's working out well. Yeah. Yeah. A great thing. It actually gets shorter. Yeah. Great. An easy thing. I don't know if you guys do this voice to text. You guys voice to text, you guys typers. But I think about that a lot. Yeah. I carry a tiny little keyboard in my back pack. What? Bluetooth keyboard so I can like type away at night. You guys are seriously my new heroes. That is so awesome. I'm going to swing around because the lights a little bit better this way. Okay. So can we get like a little explanation of your gear and stuff like that as well? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So obviously backpacks. Okay. I like to hide mine with a solar panel so it doesn't look quite as like awful. I have a slightly newer one. It's still looking a little raggedy. But most of what we're carrying is water. It's really heavy. How many gallons of water are you guys carrying each? The heaviest we've carried is 18 liters. So four gallons of water. Wow. 36 pounds. Which means that's like on top of base weight. Wow. But I don't think we'll ever do that again. Yeah. That's too much. So usually leaving town it's about 10 liters of water. Wow. Just 20 pounds. Can I give you guys some water? I have some fresh water. No. Okay. So how do you guys eat? What are you guys eating? Um, not very good stuff. I got, let's see. A lot of goldfish. Plasticides. Ramen. Crackers. Lightest stuff you can find. Okay. So you guys, you guys have like a little jet boil or something to Wow. Interesting. A can. A soda can. Really? That's very lightweight. Does that generate enough heat to cook your ramen noodles? Oh yeah. Yeah. And you can usually get the denatured alcohol and just like hardware store. So it's really easy. My gosh. You guys are so cool. How long did it take to prep for this trip? Like like mentally and planning and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we, we do a lot of long trails and usually they take maybe a couple of weeks with logistics. This one probably took half a year. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. Not every day obviously, but like we, we worked logistics for yeah, several months and then we had a whole month of just working solely on this project. And we've been in contact with a lot of organizations that are working with Kennedy's border communities and with people that are crossing. So we've been like doing a lot of outreach. We have to get a permission from like a lot of places too. So we do outreach for them, you know, in constant contact. Interesting. It's a lot of private property that we're going through. Oh, okay. That's like really complicated logistically to manage how to get around that or how to get permission to go through it. And how do you find out who owns the private property? Hunting maps, actually. Yeah. Really? There's a lot of apps out there for hunters and obviously they have to know, you know, what land they can go on. So it's actually a really good source of information for us. You guys. Yeah. And the program we use doesn't have every state in the, I mean the 50, but it does have all the border states. So we got really lucky. Yeah. Wow. That's insane. So any plans to maybe jump on a like canoe or something once you hit the Rio Grande? Is there water? Yes. Are you sure? Yeah, I was just there. We're pretty committed to walking. But walking is just a really, it's a different way to see the world and you really have to earn every step, you know. So it's, I don't know, we'll maybe canoe if we have to, but we'd like to keep to walking. Wow. Yeah, it sounds really silly that like one of the best things about hiking is just that it's slow, but you take in every single detail. You're just like constantly absorbing everything around you and using all your senses, you know, you're looking, you're smelling, you're doing all these things and it's just the best way to experience things. I completely agree. I travel by land as well. Slightly different though. That is so, oh that's so cool. I'm so glad that I was lazy yesterday and decided to stay here. And so because I met you wonderful ladies, this is such a treat for me to bump it to two people who are walking the full length of the border. Likewise. We are so sick of each other now. Like anyone we can talk to is awesome. Oh, that's amazing. All right, now I offered you a shower earlier. I'd like to offer it to you again. I got 46 gallons of water, feel free, you know. What are you saying about it? Oh, no, no, I'm probably dirtier than you guys. And where can people read your blogs and your entries and stuff like this? Yeah, www.WalkTheBorder.com. Awesome, www.WalkTheBorder.com. And the best thing you could do is like come hike with us. What? No way. It's like the main thing we're like trying to push. Okay, wait, I want to come hike with you guys. Really? Yeah, I got to go eat west, but then I'll come back east. So how can I get in touch with you? There's an email on the website that you can contact all so I can give you our information. Sweet. Oh my gosh. Do you think I should walk the border with them? Comment below. I'm sure a bunch of ladies are wondering how dangerous this is to walk the border as a woman. Well, we have not had anything remotely bad happen yet. We've never felt even a little bit unsafe. The scariest part is nights when you're just in your tent and you're hearing everything outside and you don't know exactly what's going on out there. We have heard footsteps in the night for sure, people coming by. Most people are not interested in having anything in their way or they just want to mind their own business. I would imagine they're trying to hide from people, right? They're trying to hide. And we're really strategic about where we camp every night. So whatever feels good to us, like a little area underneath a tree or next to a rock, we usually can't camp at because that feels good for someone else that also is comforting for them. So usually we're like keeping in mind who's traveling through the area. We usually can't kind of close to our roads sometimes because border patrol is constantly coming by. We just have lots of strategies and all of it too. But we're scared. We're scared every night. Really? Scared every night? Oh yeah. Yeah. Interesting. You know, that's part of having an adventure because you got to like live right on the edge of being a little bit outside your comfort zone. And honestly, that's a big part of why we're doing this is there's just a lot of racist language around this area and around dangers to women in particular. Yeah, I mean, we came into this with preconceived notions. You know, we were scared but we're tearing down our own walls. There you go. Nice. And yeah, like I said, it's been nothing but good interactions with people. We haven't had a single bad one. Yeah, amazing interaction. Okay, now have you seen any drug smugglers like running across the border with backpacks of drugs? No smugglers yet. The way you apparently they have these big square backpacks and that's how you know that they're smugglers. Okay. I haven't seen any smugglers. We have seen some migrants crossing in California, the group of a group of five or so. But they were like they were it was really casual. They were pretty young. Yeah, they kind of hidden the bushes for like a second when they saw us and then we're kind of like me and then just kept on their way, ran to the closest road, we watched a car pull up, they jumped in the car. Really? And we just kind of sat and watched it play out. It was it was crazy because it was right next to a really busy road. So in the five minutes it took them to run to the car, probably 30 cars passed. Wow. At least 30 people. And it was all just full daylight and view of the road, like nobody seemed to really be much bothered by it. So we were surprised. We were like, yeah, we're like, you have a big deal. Yeah, totally. Interesting. Wow. Like maybe they're over for the evening, just getting some like lunch and stuff and heading back. Wow. That is, wow. What an interesting story. Oh, well, thank you. Is there anything else that you guys want to add that maybe I didn't ask of interest? Emotionally draining. So any any support or mail that you send us or like I said, hiking with us. Hiking with us is the best thing we would love that because it is three more months. So we're like, oh, do you guys have any like weapons with you or anything for self defense? We have pepper spray, a flare gun, which we just got actually. Cool. The nice thing about this area is there's it's really monitored by border patrol. Yeah. So if you are in a scary situation, like help is pretty close by. So all you need to do with the flare gun. Do you guys want a small air horn that's like very, very small? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. All right, let's give them the air gun. I just was cleaning house and I have it right here. See it. Look at how light it is too. I haven't even used it. You want to test it? Yeah. Should we? Yeah. Let's go to the crap out of somebody. Yeah. Let's get of you with the light here. That is really great. Cool. So we're constantly like revamping our security kind of measures and this is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. In a pretty small package, pretty lightweight, not too much weight to carry, huh? Yeah, we have our kind of our design surprisingly. Whoa. That looks intimidating even if you're just pointing it at someone. Yeah. Funny contraption. But you know, any little additional thing. Yeah. Awesome.