Date: 2017-11-06
From: Carter Gap shelter

To: Dicks Creek Gap
Miles today: 24.3
Weather: light rain

Normally reaching our 14th and final state on the AT would be a matter of significance, but we all blasted past the NC/GA sign with barely any fanfare.The reason? After watching a damp night from within the dry interior of Carter Gap shelter, the forecast for tonight and tomorrow morning is much worse so most of us opted to push to get all the way to Dicks Creek Gap tonight. The idea is to take advantage of sleeping inside at Top of Georgia hostel and to make a late start tomorrow once the storm had rolled through.To be fair, there isn't a lot to justify dawdling between here and there. It's not quite the monotonously flat, straight and forested ridgelines of much of the mid-Atlantic section of the AT but there still isn't much to slow down for. There probably wouldn't have been many views anyway, but even that prospect was nullified by hiking in cloud for most of the day.Instead the most noteworthy factor was that we started half a mile from the border with Georgia but then began heading west and then veered due north, back towards Canada, for several miles. I'd experienced something similar on the PCT, when the nobo trail heads due south for a while in northern California and I surmised at the time that after more than three months in the state, it was doing this deliberately to trap us for longer. (This was followed by the mileage-sapping effect of amazing roadside blackberries and finally a wet spell -- bringing my rainfall total for whole of California to just 12 hours over three and a half months -- before we finally crossed into Oregon)Since the AT was now far better built and with kinder grading that in the early months, maybe heading north was intended to be a last-ditch effort by the trail designers to delay our arrival at Springer?That was something to ponder as we hiked on in conditions that were chilly and damp but not actually raining. We stopped into Muskrat Creek shelter for lunch and were fortunate to be there when a passing squall briefly soaked everything.The only other occupant was a section hiker who said she'd thru-hiked the AT the previous year and so far had been festering in the shelter rather than heading out into the rain and was going to ask Colin from Gooder Grove to pick her up at the next road crossing rather than hiking further. It was unfortunate that after our experiences of several pretend hikers in the last month, I couldn't help but quietly assess her story for inconsistencies but everything checked out. Having to question hikers rather than my natural instinct of taking them at their word is yet another skill I hoped not to use again on the trail but this vow didn't even last until the end of the day...We hiked on in a light drizzle after it passed and continued hiking through cloud and mist towards the NC/GA border, where I stopped for barely a minute and 2am took a quick photo. Our original destination for tonight was going to be Plumtree Orchard shelter, four and a half miles away, but the forecast storm was enough motivation for most of us to head all the way out to the road, which was another four and a half miles. Dirt was the only outlier, possibly for financial reasons.By this point, I figured I'd be overtaken by darkness, just three days after I'd predicted that I'd night-hiked for the last time on the trip. But I was OK with this and the reward of being indoors tonight seemed a reasonable payoff.I did the last three miles in the dark and emerged onto the road, grateful that it was just another half mile down the highway to Top of Georgia hostel, where I arrived about half an hour before their closing time of 9pm.I'm not entirely sure what to make of the guy runnning it, Sir Packsalot. He claimed to be a triple crowner -- a claim subject to a lot of disbelief and derision in some hiking circles -- and also said this place is a non-profit but ran it with ruthless corporate efficiency, apparently trying to squeeze every cent out of us.To give one example, he told us we were only allowed to use the WiFi for 10 minutes during our stay, which is a pretty bizarre request. The result is to make us feel like unwelcome barriers between him and our wallets. However since we're also only a little over 70 miles from the Springer, I figured he deserves a bit of leeway because he must get the worst of the crazy and deeply unprepared nobo hikers who start the trail as a form of therapy but haven't yet quit. He's also been busy with hikers since February, so he was probably also a little burnt out at the end of a long season.I figure the next day or so would clarify these conflicting impressions. In the meantime, we're in a very clean hostel out of the rain and we've been able to get frozen pizzas to eat.Life is good.AT fact of the day: Our last state line! The next state line will be crossed by car. Our last hostel! Um, I think... The landmarks are starting to fly by. I'm not brave enough to say there'll be no more night hiking or any more fake hikers...