Hmm… I am so curious what happened to the other shoe … and to the hiker it belonged to!  iPhone photo by Johanna Read TravelEater.net

It takes about a week to hike Scotland’s West Highland Way. The hike isn’t brutal, but it isn’t easy-peasy either. In fact, it was only the second toughest hike I’ve ever done.

So I confess to only lugging my camera on the first two days of the hike. Thank goodness I was able to get a few photos at the end of some days (yay for luggage delivery service!)  and that I had my iPhone in my pocket for the tougher days’ walks.

After I got home from the hike, I was excited that the publisher of a coffee table book was looking for photos to illustrate the text. Thanks to those days carrying the camera, and the improving quality of the iPhone’s camera, I was the photographer for the West Highland Way section of Great Hiking Trails of the World, by Karen Berger. The link just shows you a low-res PDF of the pages, so feel free to buy the book yourself, or come on over chez moi and check out my pretty copy.

I haven’t written much about the hike yet (though I do have a story to tell tentatively titled The Bride, the Mummy and the Baby Jesus), but all my stories so far are on my Scotland page. One example is for Montecristo Magazine, with the rather less controversial title of Scotland’s West Highland Way.

Hungry baby gorilla, Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda. Photo by Johanna Read TravelEater.net

Oh … curious about the hardest hike I’ve ever done? It was climbing up a 75-degree hillside through Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to get back to base after trekking to see mountain gorillas in Uganda! It was so worth it though :-)