Date: 2008-02-21
From: Gooch Shelter GA

To: Slaughter Creek Campsite GA
Miles today: 12.4

Day 4 ¢ Thursday, February 21 ¢ Slaughter Creek Campsite GA ¢ Miles Today: 12.4   Total Miles: 27.5We had a much warmer night for sleeping - 40 degrees. In the early evening we heard a couple coyotes and at dawn we heard a couple owls calling to each other. But other than that, it was an uneventful dry night. We had our homemade rain fly on the tent as we thought it might rain, but we lucked out. After studying the schedule, we decided to go past Wood's Hole Shelter by 1/2 mile to Slaughter Creek Campsite at mile marker 27.5, as Wood¢s Hole Shelter was .4 off the trail. No need to blue blaze .4 miles off trail when you can do .5 on the AT to a campsite! Today's terrain definitely had a few more inclines and declines - again nothing difficult - they're all short lived and we're having plenty of flat ridge walking or just off the ridge walking. We're still very surprised at how easy the terrain is compared to what we were expecting. By noon the sprinkles arrived and out came the rain gear, which we wore for the remainder of the day. Our lunch break was in the sprinkles alongside a creek, where we stopped to filter more water.We passed another couple today - Smoky and Phoenix. They are in their 20s and started the day before us. Unfortunately they were moving very slowing due to Phoenix¢s knee injury. We leap frogged them a couple of times as we took our breaks at different times. I believe they are going to be going slow for quite a few days until they can get the knee injury resolved. Not sure if we will see them again. It was still raining when we arrived at the Slaughter Creek Campsite at 3:00. DonkeyLegs was already there and was in his tent on the hillside above us. We got our tent set up and started cooking dinner under our umbrella. A short while later, we noticed that DonkeyLegs had collapsed his tent. He had decided to head on to Blood Mountain Shelter, as he did not like the way he had pitched his tarp tent. He¢s never used his tent before! I guess he did not feel comfortable on the hillside and in rainy conditions. It took us about an hour to cook dinner and hang our food bag in a tree. We have decided that in the future if it's 50 degrees, which it was tonight, or below and raining, that we will skip cooking a meal and just eat some bars or gorp instead, so we can dive into the tent sooner. However, we are glad that we're having the rain tonight. It's giving us the chance to test the new $3 homemade rain fly. It's been raining lightly for about three hours and so far we are dry inside. We have determined that we need to make sure that we dry any water that has accumulated on the tent between the tent and the rain fly in order to stay dry. We're hoping it rains a good many more hours so we can prove whether this is a total solution because tomorrow we pass through Neel's Gap, which has an Outfitter. We can buy a new tent there if we need to. The rain is really a catch 22 situation. If you tent, you have the set up and take down in the rain, which is really not a fun task. But if you go to a shelter, everybody else has gone to a shelter and you end up cramming 12 people in a shelter made for 6 or 8 and things get really dirty and muddy - not such a fun experience, we don't think. Tomorrow we have just over 3 miles to our first food drop at Neel's Gap Mountain Crossing (Walasi-Yi). We're looking forward to checking out the food drop process and also checking out a possible new tent. Hope we've got some care packages full of sweets waiting for us. And, of course, letters. If our homemade rain fly fails us and everything inside the tent gets wet, we may overnight at Neel's Gap to get dried out. The views today were great. Awesome rock outcroppings, lots of farmlands, and mountain ranges. Despite the rain, we had a great time hiking. It was really just a gentle rain. As the rain hit our rain jacket hood, it reminded us of being in the convertible and at the cottage. Hiking in the rain is not a big deal. Setting up and breaking camp in the rain, a little more of a deal, but it's all part of the AT experience and we're having a blast. Good night!