New Life Goal

I just stumbled upon some guy's blog and found this picture and his plans to hike all 4 trails in one calendar year. He is going to start on Jan 1, 2011. I am impressed and inspired. I didn't even know that half of those trails existed or were that long. It's already one of my goals to do the Appalachian Trail all the way through at some point but now I want to do all of them! Not necessarily in one year, I wouldn't mind spreading them out.
My problem is, as soon as I graduate from college I will (God willing) get a real job. Maybe even a career. I do not know what that job will look like... it could be anywhere from some crummy sales position to something in the non-profit sector to something entirely different. Then what? It's not like these places will just give you several months off at a time so you can just go out and hike across the country.

So I'd have to wait until I retire to do it, but then who knows if that would even work. What if I'm too old or I have health problems or I'm married and my husband doesn't want to go with me? I don't want to have to put things like this off.
Now I've been talking to Maureen lately about my dream job of moving to Arizona and running the Colorado river like the trip I went on with my family last summer. Now I could only do this job in the summer, and then I would move to like Colorado or something and work at a ski resort. There are several issues with this plan: 1. I don't know how to run a river. 2. I can't ski well enough to be a ski instructor. 3. None of this requires a college education so this whole college thing would have been a waste. However, a life like that seems like it would be more conducive to accomplishing things like the Appalachian trail and other things as well. Like relationships with people. I imagine the people that I would meet doing jobs like that would be pretty interesting and they would have such a different perspective on life than my own. I love meeting people and getting to know what makes them tick... It's just a thought.
To my dear parents who are probably reading this and freaking out because they are worried I'm going to drop out and move to Arizona: Don't worry. I'm just thinking. I'm just trying to picture my life in 10 years and I'm concerned because I have no idea what it looks like... and I refuse to go into sales. I don't want to grab the first job offered to me just because I'm afraid there won't be another one. I want to build relationships with people and feel like I'm doing something meaningful with my life.