April 18th, 2016

This morning we got up early around 7:15 to get a jump start on our 9 mile hike. We decided that today would be a good day to have the last of the coffee and so we drank warm Starbucks along with our oatmeal. After we finished packing up a middle-aged man cam down to get water at the creek and we started to talk to him for a while. It turned out that he was an ex-Navy Seal and was trying to hike 800 miles to Virginia in 40 days, which is a staggering 20 miles a day. We told him of our project and he excitingly gave us a great interview by the creek. He then left and we followed closely after. Our decision to camp 1/2 a mile down the mountain from the trail turned out to be a terrible idea because we were both already panting by the time we got back up from the creek. We had a lot of ground to cover today so we decided to hike hard for 30 minutes at a time with 5 minute water and snack breaks in between. We made it to Deep Gap shelter for lunch at noon which was a little over half of the way to Dicks Creek. Unfortunately we needed water to make Mac and Cheese for lunch and once again the water was about 1/2 a mile down the mountain and off the trail. This elongated lunch made us have to speed up our already rapid hiking pace in order to reach the Dicks Creek hostel before it closed on us like the store at Neels Gap did. We wanted to get there around 3 to be safe because we didn't really know what the store at Dicks Creek would be like or when it would close. We finally got to the road at Dicks Creek at 3:30 pm and were excited to resupply and get more food. We found out from other hikers there that the store/hostel was 1/2 a mile down the road and that the shuttles weren't picking up hikers today. Usually shuttles will come from the Top of Georgia Hostel to Dicks Creek to pickup weary hikers for a shower, food and somewhere to stay the night. We decided that we had enough food for the night and so instead of walking farther down the road to a store we didn't know would be open, we decided to just camp at a spot by Dicks Creek and try to catch a shuttle tomorrow morning.