Date: 2014-04-13
From: Lance Creek Campground

To: Neels Gap
Miles today: 7.4

Another beautiful day on the trail today. Today's mission was to get over the dreaded Blood Mountain and into Neels Gap to make reservations at the Blood Mountain Cabins for me,Ella,Homemade,Short Leash,Pocket Fire,Old Fart and Repa. The dreaded hike we thought was going to be so bad turned out not to be the case,it was a strong uphill but it seemed a lot worse looking at the guide. Ella and I had a good pace going, her pace has definitely quickened over the last 4 days and once we made it to the top, the views were spectacular. Blood Mountain is the third highest mountain in Georgia and highest mountain on the trail in Georgia. We hung out on top for a bit took some pictures and had some lunch. I finally solved the mystery of what was stinking up my food bag-one of my packets of tuna somehow had a hole in it and the tuna turned rancid and stunk pretty bad, my food bag is soaking in the tub in a soapy solution to try to get rid of it. After Blood Mountain, it was a steep decent into Neels Gap, along the way a guy from New Jersey was hiking up the trail, saw my hat and yelled out 'Lets Go Mets!' I'm so glad I wore this hat. Finally we got to Neels Gap and went into Mountain Crossings which is an outfitter store with food for resupply. I bought some honeybuns for breakfast,some sausage and cheese for lunch and dehydrated meals for dinner, I have an extra days worth of food since I didn't do the approach trail so that helped out in keeping the costs down.   We reserved two cabins-one for me,Ella and Repa and the other for the rest. It's a nice two story cabin with a porch overlooking a creek, one bedroom downstairs and one in the loft and they did laundry and we got to shower,that's a win in my book. Even though it's only been four days, it was weird being back inside, I was just getting into the routine of setting up camp every night and now I'm microwaving a burrito for a snack, I'm looking forward to being back out there. I has some internet so I turned the Met game on and it was 7-1 so I turned that off real quick and went on to planning my next section of hiking.   Before bed, Ella,Repa and I went over to hang out with Old Fart, Homemade, Short Leash and PocketFire. It was good times as always and bittersweet as Homemade,Short Leash,Old Fart and Repa are staying another day at the cabins. They say you make good friends real quick on the trail and then you say goodbye, could be forever or you'll see them down the trail. I'm learning this lesson for the first time and as much as it may suck now, I know it's for the best and meeting those people on my first days on the trail will no doubt help me further down the trail, thanks Homemade and Short Leash for the great advice and all the laughter.   Our first taste of bad weather is rolling in tomorrow night and into Tuesday so it should be interesting. Depending how tomorrow morning goes I have few options,we'll see how that day goes. Tomorrow will probably be the day I lose my hiking partner for the last 4 days as for here on out,there are many more options of where to shelter and resupply, guess it that time to move on.                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Keepin' it Steady