The People Behind It
Locomotive & Thumper
We're Monika and John — Locomotive and Thumper — and we met on trail before we ever met in person. Both of us hiked the Pacific Crest Trail in 2019, started two days apart, knew all the same hikers, and somehow never crossed paths until a spring about thirty miles north of Cascade Locks, on the morning of July 21st.
We didn't hike together after that morning. But we kept running into each other in trail towns the rest of the way, and, well — the rest is history.
We hiked the Appalachian Trail together after that, then the Continental Divide Trail in 2023. We actually bought this land mid-CDT — John doing the closing paperwork while bouncing in and out of trail towns, pack still on his back. Triple Crowners twice over, building the place we always wished was waiting at the end of a hard day.
Thirty miles south of Cascade Locks. July twenty-first. And the morning gave us everything.
