Miles: 15.1
Georgia Stats: 78.5 miles, 7 days hiking, one zero day, lots of rain, fog and cold. My favorite view: from the top of Blood Mountain.
I knew it was forecast to be cold and raining tomorrow, and I really wanted to get into North Carolina on this trip, so I hoped to hike all the way from Sassafras Gap to Bly Gap where the GA/NC state line is today. But I wasn't sure that I was up for hiking 15 miles in only 10 hours of daylight. In the cold.
I got to Dicks Creek Gap, still 9 miles from the state line, around 1:00 and took a break to eat some peanut butter. At Dicks Creek Gap the trail crosses a road and there is a parking lot and about five picnic tables. I was sitting at a picnic table eating peanut butter with a spoon out of the jar (the first day of this trip I broke my spork in half, so now I have a very short spoon and a very short fork. oops). I was studying a map and texting my brother about where we planned to meet in a few days when a middle aged man pulled into the parking lot with a large van. He sat down at the picnic table with me, which was a little bit strange because we were the only two people there. He had a Georgia road atlas. He told me that his name is Richard, he is an American citizen and owns a house in Nova Scotia. He spends six months of the year renting a vacation home here in GA. We compared his road atlas and my hiking map and shared stories about the places we knew in GA. Then he pulled out a box and gave me TWO pieces of gourmet white walnut FUDGE! Then he said he had to be going and drove away. Mmmm....fudge.
I hiked on. When it started to get dark and I was still about 3.5 miles from the state line I decided to continue hiking, even after dark, to make sure that I reached the state line. I knew that after the state line the nearest road was another 6.8 miles, so if it was going to be gross weather tomorrow I wanted to get as close as I could to the road today. About an hour and 15 minutes after dark I reached the state line. Yay! The pictures below make me look a little crazy, but I was pretty excited, and it was dark, so the flash of the camera was kind of disorienting.
The shuttle driver, Gene, had told me that there was good camping at the state line, so about seven steps into NC I set up my tent. I found a place to hang up a rope for the bear line. Gene was right, there was a flat area, good running water, and someone else had already created a fire circle. After I boiled water and ate dinner I was closing my food bag to prepare it for the bear line when a wet nose touched my face. I'm sure that my scream was heard 18 mountains away. I screamed so loudly that I heard it echo back to me. I looked into the face of domestic dog. A black dog. I breathed a sigh of relief. I looked around and called into the darkness for a hiker or a hunter, but found no one. The dog was skinny and acted very hungry. He obeyed commands, like sit and come. There was a phone number and name on his collar, so I called it, but no one answered. I left a message that included my phone number. He had a collar on that I had not seen before, it looked like there was a walkie-talkie strapped to it. Eventually I calmed down, decided he was friendly, and crawled into my tent. He slept outside of my tent, about a foot away all night. When I got up at midnight to pee he was still there. Welcome to North Carolina.
View from the Trail
This is a Holly Tree.
A grove of Holly Trees. This was a pleasant holiday walk today.
I don't know who wrote this, but I was glad to see it on a fallen log along the trail.
A view of the sunset as I decided to keep walking even after dark to reach the state line.
Me at the sign marking the North Carolina/ Georgia border, with my headlamp in the dark.
Most nights I boil water and add it to a dehydrated meal from Alpine Air or Mountain House for my dinner. Usually I like them. For some reason, tonight's dinner looks like vomit. Here is a picture of it before it is digested by me. But it tasted good.
Here is a picture of the dog's collar. You can see the corner of my tent also in the picture.
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