Date: 2016-03-01
From: Chattahoochee Gap

To: Top of Georgia Hostel
Miles today: 21.7
Weather: overcast clouds

I gotta tell you, the stars were amazing last night. With no artificial lights around to fade them out, they were brilliant! We started out in our our headlamps this morning (thankfully I had my new one). So we decided to stretch our legs on a trail going north before we started our real hike today on AT. If you believe that I've got a bridge in San Francisco I'd like to sell you! There are times when I think about omitting a few things in our journal that would make me look bad but it wouldn't really be a true picture of our hike. So what really happened this morning is that we missed the trail and hiked for about an hour round trip on the wrong trail. We just kept trying to convince ourselves that we were on the AT, but finally we had to admit we were on a side trail. We made our way back to Chattahoochee Gap and started over. What started out as a 5:50am start time ended up as a 7am start. We had to rearrange our mindset because it is what it is.I think Chattahoochee is a fun name. And in Georgia it is used to name a whole bunch of things. For example, the gap we left this morning, a forest sytem, a river, fire stations erc. As soon as I heard this name a song popped up. "Way down yonder in the Chattahoochee, it gets hotter than a hoochee koochee", Do you know it? It's an old song. Yeah, kind of fun to sing the first 15 or 20 times but I got stuck singing it in a loop in my head, after the millionth time it's not as fun, believe me.We passed one of the many shelters on the trail this morning and stopped to get some water.   I took off my pack and set it down. Low and behold, there was a question mark in sweat on it. I took a picture for you. But that got me wondering. What is the question that my pack wanted me to answer? I have already answered the question of why I hike so that can't be it. Why is there something instead of nothing? Well, I believe in a personal Creator God, so that answers that one for me. Did Oswald kill Kennedy or was it really black ops for the government because of his stance in Cuba? I don't know the answer to that one but you gotta wonder why my backpack would want to know that in the first place. Whatever the question was, it gave me something to think about as I walked down the trail.I have to admit, the trail kicked our butt today. We ended up doing like 5,000 feet of elevation gain. And though we hiked about 24 miles because of our little glitch this morning, only 22 were AT miles. But thankfully, there was the downhill. And that's the reason for today's title. I got the trail name Road Runner from Three Cats on the PCT in 2013 for a leg release thing I do on the downhill. I need a long smooth graded decline to do it and today I had it. Yippee! We reached Dick's Creek Gap but still had another .5 mile to get to the Top of Georgia Hostel where we had shipped a resupply package. What a warm and friendly welcome we received.   Today was the 2nd birthday for the hostel. We hadn't really decided if we wanted to stay or go into town, but once we got here and looked around we knew this was the place for our weary hiker bodies. Definitely recommend this hostel if you are hiking through. And now, I've had a shower, my clothes are clean and supper has been eaten. I'm exhausted so I will bid you a good nigbt!Road Runner