Date: 2008-02-25
From: Deep Gap Shelter GA

To: Hiawassee Inn - Hiawassee GA 
Miles today: 3.5
Weather: clear sky

Day 8 ¢ Monday, February 25 ¢ Hiawassee GA ¢ Miles Today: 3.5 Total Miles: 67.5Happy Birthday, Mr. GrasshopperAlthough the forecast was supposed to be for clear weather, we had sprinkles last night and eventually a little rain - perhaps half an inch. But we woke up to dry conditions and 39 degrees. The night had some interesting animal noises. Sometime in the middle of the night, Brakeman heard some strange sounds coming from down in the ¢holler¢. He had heard that the sound of a mountain lion is like a woman screaming, kind of like a mournful scream, and sure enough that is what he heard during the night. He could pick out at least two mountain lions but there may have been as many as four.   The noise continued from down in the holler and worked it's way up around the shelter and up toward the ridge behind us. Eventually the sounds became more and more frequent and then suddenly those sounds stopped. Next he heard another sound, which resembled a pig squealing and grunting. Then everything was quiet for the rest of the night. Best we can figure out is the mountain lions scored a wild pig for dinner! And to think that they did not share it with us!We had a 10:00am pickup appointment and not wanting to be late, we got up around 6:00. We weren't sure how long it would take to hike the 3.5 miles, so we decided to error on the conservative side. We had a leisurely morning packing and eating breakfast before heading down the trail about 7:30. The terrain was not too terribly difficult and we arrived at our meeting place about 45 minutes early. We spent the time working on our to-do lists and taking some pictures. While we were waiting, we met Dartman and Piper as they got dropped off from the Cloud 9 Hostel folks. They informed us that bad weather was coming. More on that later. DonkeyLegs also passed through and continued up the trail. He's skipping Hiawassee and headed onto Franklin. We offered to lighten his load by taking his trash. He gladly turned it over to us. He's thinking of laying over in Franklin to give his blisters time to heal and to also give him time to work on his website - Blog.DonkeyLegs.com. Lo and behold before we knew it our shuttle ride appeared - 20 minutes early. It wasn't too long of a wait after all. Hiawassee is a lovely mountain town. It has many more new buildings than we expected. And we loved the combination of mountains and lakes. Very pretty.   Lisa, the motel shuttle driver, drove us the 11 miles to the motel and directed us right to our room - #101. We were confused as we expected to be directed to the lobby so we could give them our credit card to check in, but it's a small town and a small motel so the processes are obviously different than big cities.   Lisa handed us a laundry basket, told us to throw all our dirty clothes in the basket and set it outside our room. She¢ll wash our clothes and bring them back to our room in an hour. Great service, for just $3.50! The owners seemed quite glad to see us. They hollered a very loud ¢HELLO¢ across the parking lot to us, as they did some exterior work on the building. We even got a knock on the door around 2:00 asking if we would join them for a pizza dinner - a homemade pizza dinner. They must know us well. Gee, that invite will take a lot of consideration. Hmmm¢¦one nanosecond later, ¢Sure, we¢d be delighted to join you!¢First order of business was a shower! I think we each took a 45-minute shower. I'm surprised we didn't run the hot water tank out. It was the first shower we had in one week and boy did it feel good. Oh yea, and Brakeman's 5 o¢clock shadow, which took 10 days to grow, was shaved off with no nicks. He's growing up to be such the big boy!We had a nice surprise when we checked in - a care package from Mr. & Mrs. Grasshopper!   The bright yellow Glad garbage bag box was stuffed full of truffles, a salty snack mix and a huge Hershey's chocolate bar, most of which has already been eaten. We'll share some of our truffles, not all of them just some of them, with the owners tonight as part of our pizza dinner contribution. The room is completely covered with our gear since we had rain last night. The tent and rain fly are strung out to dry. The sleeping bags are spread out on one bed airing. Socks, shoes and food items are all over everywhere. We'll have to begin the repacking process before our 6:30 pizza dinner because I'm sure when we head back, we'll be ready to crash. After freshening up, we walked about a half mile to the library, checked our email accounts and sent out our latest update. Today was a beautiful sunny day - the first sunny day we've had in Georgia and we're not even hiking. But actually, that's not too bad since it might have been a little bit warm for hiking. However, the nice weather is to be short-lived. The rain is to move in after midnight and is to last about 12 hours. Then it¢s to change to snow flurries on Wednesday with temperatures dropping to the 20s at night and just the 40s during the day and windy. I think we're in for some cold weather.   The fun is really about to begin! Tomorrow we leave Georgia and enter North Carolina! Our summary for Georgia is: windy, fogged in views, lots of sprinkles, knobby gnarly trees, steep short inclines and declines, barred owls every single night, last 15 miles of trail were the hardest and only getting lost twice. What more could one want?? Many, many thanks to all our support team members for their great contributions and making this adventure possible. Talk to you later. Bye.