[at-l] Postal Packages

[spiriteagle99 at hotmail.com (Jim and/or Ginny Owen)]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that if you give friends and family 
a maildrop list, so there is a possibility that they will send you letters 
and goodies along the way (some people are very good that way), when you 
leave town, you need to leave a change of address card at the post office.  
We always did it to a town two or three up the line - about two weeks ahead. 
  That way, if anyone did send goodies that arrived a day or two after us 
they would still reach us while we were on the trail.  (I tend to be 
conservative when making a tentative schedule, so it isn't too hard to 
overrun the plan).  And if you get off the trail, you will need to send a 
change of address card to all the towns you planned to stop at, because some 
of your friends may not have gotten the word that you have gone home.  
There's a lot of abandoned mail in the Post Offices along the trail.  
Vermillion Valley Resort on the PCT had two huge barrels full of food that 
was left by hikers who never showed up.  At the end of the season, any 
unclaimed boxes ended up in the barrel -- for use by hikers the next year.

Also, be sure to tell anyone who has your maildrop schedule to write across 
the front of anything they send to you, "PLEASE HOLD FOR AT HIKER, with an 
estimated arrival date. Jim had a filter sent from REI to Hot Springs.  They 
didn't write on it that he was an AT hiker.  It was returned, because the 
Jim Owen who lived in town (of course, there was one) refused to accept it.  
On the CDT we frequently had the problem of friends sending goodies too 
early.  Although the post offices said that they would hold packages for 30 
days, many of them sent things back to the sender after only a week or so.  
Several people sent Jim birthday goodies that he never received. On the AT, 
they are used to hikers, so will hold things for a longer time, but they run 
into the opposite problem.  Unless you put an ETA on the package, they won't 
know that you are two months late and probably went home at Fontana.  
They'll hold the package until the end of the season - by which time your 
package may be very smelly.

One final tip, we kept a sheet of printed labels for all future drops in our 
drift box, which made it easy to forward boxes, and to remember the address 
for the change of address form at the PO.

Ginny

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