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.