Date: 2009-05-17
From: Amicalola Falls State Park

To: Black Gap Shelter
Miles today: 7.3
Weather: overcast clouds

10am 5/26/09 I'm at the public library in Hiawassee. I forgot my written journal back at the Inn. I'll be back a little later to update for our (Tim, Jenna, and I) last 9 days spent on the AT. It's been awesome so far!3:45pm 5/26/09 Ok, I hope I'll be able to update more often than this. I would have updated at the Walasi-Yi/Mountain Crossings Outfitter and hostel but the computer had crashed. I'll have some pictures up hopefully next week when I have my cord sent to port the pictures. This computer and probably most don't have a slot for the memory card so I'm SOL for now.Day 1 5/17/09Tim, Jenna, and I arrived in Gainesville, GA after a grueling 24hr bus ride with 5 changeovers. All of us, slept very little. Only little naps here and there, so we were exhausted before we even got on the trail. There were a few highlights of the bus trip and that was spending the bus ride from Boston to New York City, next to a Prima Ballerina. We had fun swapping life stories and she just couldn't believe what the three of us were about to do. Then, we had almost 2hrs before our next bus, the bus station was right next to Times Square, and we went walking around with ours packs on and all in hiking gear. It was really fun. We received many strange looks, and more than one person came up to us and asked, "Are you guys lost or something?" or "Did you take a wrong turn somewhere?" and the likes. We really stood out in the crowd and drew quite a bit of attention. There were a lot of cool people, got asked to come up on stage at one of the comedy clubs, and ate an ice cream cone while walking around. The rest of the bus ride was attempting to sleep without much luck.When we FINALLY got to Georgia, our super awesome shuttle guy Survivor Dave covered with cool tattoos was there standing out beside his big, green SUV covered with Appalachian Trail stickers, waiting for us to arrive. He kindly stopped at Subway on the way to the trailhead and we got our last little taste of "real food" before heading out into the woods. Mmmm subs... It wasn't long before we got to Amicalola Falls State Park(AFSF), weighed our packs, Survivor Dave snapped our pictures under the arch (thanks btw!), and headed out on the trail. It was about 1pm. The first thing of mention is the 600 metal steps that are built going up the mountain, crisscrossing the falls, and delivering us a nice little ass kicking right from the start. The trail we we on was an 8.8 mile "approach trail" to the top of Springer, which is the southern terminus of the AT and the start of the AT for us northbounders(NOBOs) as we're called. It was a overcast, damp, and steamy kind of day. We saw lots of multicolored centipedes, flowering mountain laurels and plenty of other flora and fauna that you don't see "up north". We made it to the Black Gap Shelter at mile 7.3 that evening about 6pm and had just enough time to set up our tents and eat before it started to downpour. There were a few others staying at the shelter that night, including "Bird" from NY(www.birdheadstudios.com) a very interesting guy to say the least, and two guys from Chattanooga, TN named Derek and Matt. Derek and Matt, or Dirty D and KFC ended up crossing our paths over the next few days and we became good friends, but more on that later. We still haven't caught up to "Bird" now "Mr.Daisy", saw him briefly in Neels Gap on our fifth day, but have definitely enjoyed his entries in the registers that everyone signs at all the shelters along the way. (So far, there have been shelters about every 7-8 miles or so here in GA and some are even closer. We haven't stayed in any of the shelters, because 1 we brought tents, and 2 most have mice that like to run all over your face at night and chew into your pack, etc.) It was a good warm up hike for our start to the AT =)