Friday March 15, 9.4 miles/15 km

Steeltrap Gap (59.8) to Dick’s Creek Gap (69.2) (GA)

I woke up early at 6:30am, since I knew I had to catch the shuttle to the motel at 11am. It rained hard and thunderstormed all night, so I packed up a soaking wet tent, and hit a sloshy trail at 7am.

After 30 minutes, I was able to turn off my headlamp, and move a little faster thru the thick fog.

The next junction was called “Swag of the blue ridge”… huh?

There were a couple of viewpoints along the ridge, the clouds obscured most of them.

The rain stopped, and I was able to take some photos of the trail. It’s soggy from the 1+ inch of rain last night, but otherwise in great shape.

On the descent to the road, I came across a creek with a random small bench. Kinda creepy seeing that in the fog…

I get to the road at 10:45am, for the 11:15am shuttle to the Budget inn. I meet another group of hikers also trying to get into town – Woodchuck, Gunner, and Johanna. We wait around, 11:15am comes and goes, so we start walking down to road to a spot known to have cell signal. Along the way, another shuttle service sees us walking, and picks up the 4 of us. Perfect! We go straight to the Huddle House diner, and Johanna (from Denmark) discovers the joy of chicken & waffles. I get the same meal, plus a milkshake of course.

Since the Budget inn is full, we split a room at the Holiday Inn, and have full-on hikertrash pack explosions.

After a resupply at the very large Ingles grocery, we go to a Mexican restaurant. The margaritas & burritos were amazing.

I’m exhausted, but it’s a very entertaining group and we have fun staying up late in the hotel room. I get distracted by hilarious conversation, singing bad pop music, and learning new vocabulary.