We had some unfinished business from yesterday, as we had stopped three miles short of completing the AT in Georgia. Breaking camp went twenty minutes quicker than our previous attempts, and we were in great spirits until we hit our first incline. We’ve noticed we have a problem in that we remember all downhill sections from last fall’s practice hike southbound in this area as being level, and are dumbfounded at being forced to walk upward! We are neither very good company when this occurs. Thankfully, we reached the North Carolina line before we killed each other, and celebrated with a joint recitation:

A Tarheel Toast: “Here’s to the land of the long leaf pine/ the summer land where the sun doth shine/ where the weak grow strong/ and the strong grow great/ here’s to “down home”/ the Old North State.”

Ever since last fall, N has dreamed of returning to photograph the other side of the boundary sign tree, the side no one ever sees. X fails to see the humor or excitement in this but aids her companion in documenting this major GA>ME moment. The following climb out of Bly Gap (again catching us by surprise) returns us to ill humor, as our pace is barely a crawl…

A number of readers have asked for an update on our two backpacks, Shock & Awe. After several days on the trail, we notice our clothes have developed rather pungent personalities. They do however remain rather docile: when we take them off and order them to hang themselves out to air, they march themselves right over to the nearest tree and do it! Not so with Shock and Awe. We’ve tried to train them to be more independent, and go on ahead of us on their own. However, they’ll have none of it, sticking right behind and doing no work of their own. Major negative vibes… the only good news in this department is that after three days out and neither of us wanting to remotely touch the oatmeal, we were able to unload (what seemed like) several pounds of the stuff from the food bag. We are happy to report this took a little wind out of Shock’s sails…

Bear sightings, wildflowers & trail humor…

We saw a bear! Shortly after we started the day’s hike, X began noticing signs of bear: scratch marks along the berm of the trail where bugs love to hang out, bark ripped off trees & stumps where insect larvae is plentiful and holes dug at the base & roots of dead/downed trees. As we walked along, we noticed the woods had become eerily quiet. No bird song, even. Then we heard the sound of something running/crashing through the woods off to our right. And there it was! The bear ran parallel to the trail for just seconds, then lumbered off to the far right and disappeared. It did all of this in probably less time than you took to read about the sighting, but our pucker factor was high.

I’m sure on your favorite criminal minds TV show or movie you’ve watched how the good guys take a bad guy’s fingerprint and run it through a database of a gazillion others to see if they get “a match.” X would love to see if there’s an app out there that can do the same for pictures of wildflowers. You see, X is a tree person and while she loves wildflowers, she’s never learned more about them than just enough to be dangerous. As an example, we’ve posted a yellow beauty below (some Trillium we suppose?) which was spotted along the trail near the end of the day’s hike. Beyond “pretty flower,” we don’t have a clue…

And now for a bit of trail humor…

X: How can you tell the difference between a day hiker and a thru-hiker?

N: I don’t know. How?

X: A day hiker sees an M & M lying in the middle of the trail and steps over it. A thru-hiker sees an M & M lying in the middle of the trail and yells, “Trail Magic!”

N: (he groans & rolls his eyes)

Day 6.2 – “Necessity is a Mother”

We had heard stormy weather (with 60% chance of severe thunder storms) was heading our way tonight. As we dislike setting up camp in the rain almost as much as breaking down camp in the rain, we decided to ignore our “no sleeping in shelters” policy, and pushed for our longest day yet to get us over Standing Indian Mountain, and tried to snag a place with a roof over our heads before the storm hit. We just made it to Carter Gap shelter, but discovered shelter late-comers are treated like second class citizens and are stuck in the basement. Who even knew AT shelters had basements??? We lie here awake (amid rodent droppings and worries of hanta virus) waiting to see what the weather brings, and whether the extra miles (and the extra effort) were worth it. We will note for future thru-hikers, shelter snorers are just as loud when they are eighteen inches above your head.

[And of course the next morning we awake to find the weather forecast was a false alarm: No rain at all. This will become a recurring theme, as will the opposite (no rain in the forecast, followed by a deluge…).]