April 19th, 2016

Today we woke up at camp next to Dicks Creek with the goal being to catch an early shuttle to the Top of Georgia hostel to resupply food. When we came out of the woods to Dicks Creek, there was a family set up at a table with free food and drinks for hikers. This was our second big encounter with Trail Magic and we decided to grab a drink but leave everything else for other hikers since we were about to get more food anyway. The family giving out the food was doing it to honor the dad in their family who was a thru-hiker who had passed away last year. The daughter of the family told me that every year her father would come out to Dicks Creek to give out food to weary hikers and so this year they decided to carry on his tradition to honor him. After talking to the family of Trail Angels, we started to hitch hike for a ride to the shuttle. It took us a while but eventually an emergency construction truck let us ride in the truck bed down the road to the hostel. There, we took off our shoes and walked inside to what looked like an ordinary house where two women where waiting inside. We saw signs to frozen food and beverages and so we decided to indulge ourselves with a DiGiorno meat pizza and some soda while I started to charge my phone and portable chargers. We told the women there about our project and they suggested that we interview the owner of the Hostel, "Sir Packs-alot" who is a triple crown hiker. This means that throughout his lifetime, he has thru-hiked the entire Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental Divide Trail. We pounced on the opportunity and got a great interview out of an avid outdoorsman and hiker. My favorite thing that he talked about was how trail names allow for people to create a new identity for themselves and become almost a new person on the trail. He said this freedom to be yourself in an environment without any of the worries of your life in society is why he got addicted to hiking and now spends his life on the AT helping hikers with the hospitality of his hostel. After our pizza we went into their resupply room where we looked at a limited amount of food and supplies. The only food that we ended up buying there were two Mountain House spagetti meals and Poptarts. We decided that we would be able to get better found if we hitchhiked a ride farther down the road into the mountain town of Hiawassee, where we had heard from Sir Packs-alot and other hikers there was an Ingles grocery store. We left the hostel and started hitchhiking and this time got lucky and were picked up by a nice man named Jose who owned a restaurant in town. Jose drove us 10 miles from the Top of Georgia hostel into Hiawassee and kindly dropped us off at the grocery store. We weren't really sure how we would get back to Dicks Creek but decided we could use Uber if we couldn't find a ride. We spent the next hour or so buying enough food for our last few days on the trail. We ended up buying burger meat and buns for dinner tonight because we remembered we saw a grill top that we could put over a fire back at Dicks Creek. I decided to charge my phone again at Ingles in the dining area and an older lady and her husband saw our packs and asked if we needed a ride any where. We graciously excepted and hauled our packs and groceries into their Jeep. They told us that they lived just outside of Hiawassee, and tried to help out hikers any time they had the chance. When they dropped us off at Dicks Creek we thanked them greatly and ate ham sandwiches at the picnic area there. We then set out to hike an easy 2.5 miles to Bull Gap since we had already spent a lot of time buying food, our packs were a lot heavier, and because we were already way ahead of schedule. At camp we met a young guy named Alex who was passing by who saw that we were grilling burgers and came to talk to us. We found out that he had just graduated from Georgia and was thru-hiking the AT. We had a really nice and natural conversation with him and eventually offered him a burger. We hung out a little more and talked a lot about college and what we should expect. That night Alex slept at camp with us in his own tent after we stayed up late grilling and hanging out.

Inside the hostel Top of Georgia a 1/2 a mile down the road from Dicks Creek. On the wall are Sir Packs-alot's 10 Golden Rules to successfully thru-hike the Appalachian Trail.