Week 1 - awful weather

We have finally had a chance to get a blog up and going. Today is our 7th day of the hike. Everything has been going very well, we've been pushing ourselves to wake up sooner, pack up camp faster, and hike a bit quicker each day, and are very hopeful that we will figure out our system soon.

We have traveled about ten miles each day and have been fortunate enough to spend most of our nights at the shelters. The one night we spent in a tent was pretty windy and we were woken up in the middle of the night by Search & Rescue looking for a lost day hiker.

We spent one night in a hostel at Neels Gap and set out the next day at 5:30 to stay ahead of the weather. We got to camp relatively early and spent the afternoon watching the freezing rain turn the ground into a skating rink and coated the trees in ice.

Unfortunately my (Hannah) feet have developed some nasty blisters so luckily for them we were forced to leave the trail yesterday due to bad weather. We were hoping to stay out on the trail for a couple more days but the bad weather started a lot sooner than we were anticipating.

Luckily we were only 10 miles from Hiawassee, GA so we called our old landlord who offered us a ride and a warm place to stay. So we have hunkered down with a hot bath and some chocolate milk to ride out the storm. We finished the first quart of chocolate milk so had to go buy another half gallon.