Date: 2017-09-23
From: Trout Creek

To: Sinking Creek camsite
Miles today: 18.1
Weather: scattered clouds

The highlights of Tinker Cliffs, McAfee Knob and the Dragon's Tooth proved to be but a brief aberration from the AT's business as usual: a series of long and mostly featureless forested ridgelines running in parallel with each other in a vaguely Georgia-ish direction. We certainly felt very familiar with today's agenda -- set off early when it was still cool, do a big climb up to a ridgeline which we'd follow for several hours, descend to a valley that is usually the only source of water before camp and then, in the heat of the day, sweat our way up to the top of a parallel ridge which we'd then follow for the rest of the day -- because apart from the last few days, it's what we'd been doing for more than a month. But at least now the trail is pretty good and even featured pleasant grades of the kind that made the 1600ft climb out of camp this morning entirely painless. And there were a few unique landmarks to distinguish today from the "rinse and repeat" cycle of the AT in Virginia. As we'd left camp, 2am advised us that there were benches marked on the AWOL guide at the top of the ridgeline. It became the goal for our first break.These benches were at the Audie Murphy monument, named for the most decorated US soldier in the Second World War who survived that conflict but was killed in 1971 when his plane crashed into this ridge not far from this spot. Now there is a substantial granite monument bedecked in American flags and various forms of military paraphernalia. We only realised it was Saturday from the number of day hikers we encountered after the monument, which was more easily reached from the opposite direction. The next notable landmark came after we'd had lunch at Niday shelter, part of the way up the next parallel forested ridge, and found a sign signifying that we were standing astride the eastern continental divide. Water to one side of this ridge flowed into the Atlantic and water on the other flowed into the Gulf of Mexico.There were yet more indications that there had once been farms on the crests of these ridges, presumably because the rainfall here was more reliable or maybe because the seemingly more valuable riverside land was unavailable.If it had been up to us, these indications would have been in the form of old apple trees groaning with fruit but in this case it was mounds of rocks that had been shifted to improve the fields up here. It must have been a difficulty and hardscrabble existence. No other sign that this land had ever been cultivated remained and the forest had long since claimed back the vanity -- or desperation -- of these early farmers.In time we left this ridge too and walked down into cleared farmland -- home of an enormous old oak that was reputed to be the second biggest on the trail -- then back into forest to the campsite that was our goal.It was not a particularly nice campsite, featuring a couple of good sites but most of the others being sloping and substandard. But we made it work, got another fire going and had yet another convivial night before what's likely to be another day of rinse and repeat.Life is good.AT fact of the day: We've missed the worst of the heat, compared to nobos, but the last few days have been scorching. I drank a litre at lunch and carried two more out of Niday shelter but it was only just enough to get to our campsite. We're going to have to pay more attention to this as these dry post-equinoxial days continue.