AT Update

Have not updated in awhile - but we have been busy little hikers during this month. In our last post, we mentioned that we had started at Springer Mountain. Since then, we have done Blood Mountain, Hawk Mountain, and today Sassafras Mountain. We have now hiked a total of 38 miles! Today's hike was one of the most difficult - 3.8 miles virtually straight up. Sarah was strong for the whole hike, and kept her senior citizen parents going by cutting up and making jokes. We were treated to encounters with deer and a box turtle, who had taken up residence in the middle of the access road! Sarah graciously repositioned the turtle to the shoulder - probably extending his life span by at least several days! One of the gaps we came through today was called Horse Gap, so appropriately, we have Sarah's picture in front of the sign.

Wanderlust

Over the past few years, we've made several hikes up Kennesaw Mountain. Last time we did it, we conquered the Big and Little mountains at this site. Since we like hiking, we've been looking for new challenges - and yesterday, decided to tackle the Appalachian Trail here in GA, more specifically, Springer Mountain. We arrived promptly at 9AM, and started our trek. The weather was perfect, and the trail provides natural shading from direct sunlight, as it is shrouded by deep forestation. People along the trail were very friendly - I noticed that it was only a fraction as busy as Kennesaw had been - I'm sure $4 /gallon gas, and the 60 mile distance from Atlanta were contributors to this - which was fine with us. We kept pushing and pushing, not wanting to turn back, more like, "let's just climb this last peak" - until eventually, we were about 7 miles away from our car. The majority of the hike had been DOWN Springer Mountain, and to get back, we ended up hiking 7 miles UP Springer Mountain. Sarah was a trooper, although much of the spring in her step had disappeared by mile 12. We finally made it back to the car, about 5 hours after we'd left it. Tired, but in a good way, and with big dreams of returning, and hopefully scaling all of the GA portion of the trail and into NC. On the way out, we met one of the fellows who maintains the trail. He was kind enough to take our picture - which is attached here.