Leonard M. Adkins has logged over 19,000 miles hiking in the world's back country. Each hiking season finds him on a new adventure. He has hiked the entire Appalachian Trail five times, traversed the Continental Divide from Canada to Mexico, followed the Pacific Northwest Trail through Montana, Idaho, and Washington, and walked Canada's Great Divide Trail. He has also trekked the full length of the Pyrenees High Route from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and has explored Iceland's interior. With his wife Laurie, he hiked New Zealand's Milford Track, along with a number of the country's other Great Walks. And, of course, he has hiked every one of the official parkway trails in this book--with a surveyor's measuring wheel to insure the accuracy of the mileage and the description. Leonard is author of 17 books and over 200 articles on the outdoors, nature, and travel and is the hiking columnist for Blue Ridge Country and the hiking blogger for richmondoutdoors.

com. He is also a Natural Heritage Monitor and a member of the Old Dominion Appalachian Trail Club board. As Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway's Adopt-an-Overlook program volunteers, Leonard and Laurie work to maintain the quality of the visitor experience to the Greenstone Overlook, the spot that inspired him to walk all of the parkway's official trails in the first place.