Date: 2009-03-21
From: Springer Mountain Shelter, GA 

To: Hawk Mountain Shelter
Miles today: 7.6
Weather: broken clouds

I slept pretty good in the shelter last night. Lots of snoring and people going out to water the leaves, but I slept better than I thought I would. Didn't see or hear any mice. Floor was very hard though. Took me a while to brave the cold and crawl out of the sleeping bag, but I knew that I didn't have very far to go today which made me a little slower. But I finally emerged and ate breakfast and packed up. I found that I was a little less organized in the shelter with having to share the space, but it was nice. I walked for a while by myself today and I was amazed at the beauty of the woods. I can't really look around when I'm walking or I'd trip and stumble over the rocks and tree roots in the trail. So I found myself stopping a lot to just look at the different types of trees and rocks and everything that I was passing. The trail was mostly down for the first part of the day and the scenery was just awesome. I hope that I am just as excited about the scenery as I head North. I passed three separate groups of trail maintainers and they were hard at work. The GATC diffently do a great job at maintaining the trail through this area. Blaze was working with the second group of maintainers and is my first trail angel. He gave me some excellent trail mix that I had with my lunch. I had to take Blaze's picture since he was my first trail angel and it was funny cause the rest of the workers were just leaning on their picks, but when I got the camera out they all started working. Ha. After the picture they went back to leaning on their picks. Made for a good picture though. The third group gave us some info about the lack of water between Hawk Mountain Shelter and the next five miles, telling us to make sure we filled up before taking off tomorrow morning. They also recommended that we stop at Long Creek Shelter which I had planned on going. Very nice of them to give us the info. Quite a lot of the trail today followed along Stover Creek and I crossed it several times. Walking next to a babbling brook for most of the day really added to my enjoyment of the day. By this time I had caught up with Stud, Wolf Man and Yak and we headed to the waterfall. I definitely recommend that anybody passing through there stop at the Long Creek Falls. With all the rain they had in this area last week, the falls were flowing very nicely. If it is warm out the pool at the bottom of the falls would feel wonderful. We took pictures and then had a long lunch break. I couldn't have asked for a better location for lunch. When the sun was blocked by some trees we decided that lunch was over and we hiked on. I hiked and talked with Stud for the rest of the day. She enjoys the rocks, trees and views as much as I do and we looked for more sprouting acorns. She is a fun person to hike with. She is only doing a two week section hike. Darn. Wolf Man and Yak are thru-hikers and we are keeping the same mileage for this first section. Oh, I forgot to tell you about the suspenders I saw yesterday. I was walking the approach trail and was thinking that I hadn't seen any disguarded gear like Bryson talked about in The Walk in the Woods. Then all of a sudden I saw a pair of red, white and blue suspenders hanging in a tree right at eye level about one foot from the trail. That cracked me up. Today we saw what looked to me like a flowered sheet, but someone here at the shelter said it was a liner. Weird place to see it. We got to the shelter pretty early, but the next shelter is another 7.3 miles away. So we stopped. There are quite a few people here tonight, so we are tenting. I was getting quite chilly, but it is much warmer in my tent. I've been told it doesn't get warmer really until Virginia. The Army Rangers do part of their training in this area and we are being serenaded by gun fire. They use this area as part of the mountain phase of their training and they are busy tonight. Hopefully they won't have night training tonight and will stop all the racket soon. I feel like I'm doing pretty good and not having too much trouble with what I have encountered so far. Tomorrow is going to be harder as we have to make our way over Sassafras Mountain and the elevation chart looks like it is up and down and up and down and.... Get the picture. I try to just go really slow going up so that I'm not breathing too hard. I'm still feeling very excited and looking forward to seeing what is around every corner. Well time for me to get some sleep so that I have the energy to tackle the trail tomorrow.