Alexis Holzmann: Appalachian Trail Thru-Hiker

Date Published: January 1, 1970

Poughkeepsie local Alexis Hozlmann share her experiences thru-hiking the famous Appalachian Trail, how Dutchess County served as the perfect training ground before the expedition and her favorite parts of the Dutchess section of the AT.

"I was 27 when I started the trail and this has pretty much been a decade-long dream for me. When I was in high school, (I went to Arlington), my friends and I were always looking for something free but fun to do. And so once we started driving, we started going on local hikes," Holzmann said. "One of them was Nuclear Lake, and I remember seeing the white blazes and that it was part of the Appalachian Trail, and that piqued my interest."

White blazes are the white rectangles painted on trees denoting stretches of the famous Appalachian Trail. There are more than 165,000 of them along the route from Georgia to Maine.