Day 84 - Monday, June 7, 2021

Today’s hike will be our last hike in North Carolina, checking off another state,  as we are crossing the North Carolina / Georgia state border making our way to Springer Mountain. We should reach Springer by the end of this coming weekend 🎉 .

Today we are hiking from Deep Gap, USFS 71 (85.0 NoBo) to Dicks Creek Gap, US 76 (69.2 NoBo) for a total of 15.8 miles. We have been increasing our hikes distances which will also lessen our trail days. If we continue at this pace would result in 18-20 fewer hikes for the remainder of the AT.

We attempted to begin hiking at 8:30 am but the forecasted intermittent showers this morning upgraded into a heavy downpour. So we waited till 9:00 for the rain to slow down to a steady light rain.... which only lasted about 15 minutes and a heavy downpours continued throughout the morning till almost noon. We were quickly soaked to the bone from the bottom of our ponchos down... water literally gushing in our hiking shoes 🤨.




Have I mentioned that I don’t like hiking in the rain!


Someone built a nice little bench down by a local water source.



Red Georgia clays... the only place this belongs is in a baseball field’s infield ⚾️ 😉. 




The torrential rains filled the trail like it was an aqueduct; which made hiking extra special 🙄.



This trailhead sign didn’t make sense to us* 🤔. 



The rhododendron blossoms have bloomed and started to drop.



Another scenic vista... plus the low cloud cover. 


*Previously I mentioned trail signs were not making sense when compared the mileage designations in the AT Guide... There wasn’t any marker on the trail designating the GA-NC state border, the shelters weren’t matching up,  then we come to a trailhead marker  reading Tray Gap 🤔?  

After checking the AT Guide we discovered we hiked in the wrong direction 😳🤫😲. And to make matters even worse we did not have one of our vehicles at this location. So after spending the better part of an hour on the phone calling trail shuttles, which service was spotty (we kept dropping calls, we finally made arrangements with a shuttle to pick us up. One small minor problem... they could not pick us up till 9 pm as they were busy shuttling other hikers and it was only 4 pm. We were meeting the shuttle at the State highway, 4.5 miles away so we started hiking there. I know you can’t make this up 🙄. 

We get to US 76 to wait for our shuttle when a pickup truck pulls down the USFS road and we asked if they were going to Dick’s Creek Gap and the Good Samaritan said “he could be”.  So I let the shuttle driver know we got a ride, he was going to credit me if we need them again... seemed fair to me as I told him we made a deal and we chose to catch the other ride... anyways it all worked out and we got back to Turtle Power’s truck.



Our Good Samaritan.. thanks again!

So back to our hike... we ended up hiking from Dick’s Creek Gap, US 76 (69.2 NoBo) to Indian Grave Gap, USFS 283 (55.2 NoBo) for a total of 14.0 miles. We will hike today’s intended hike tomorrow, so all is well... no blood, no foul 🤫.

We finished hiking at 3:55 pm under partly cloudy skies. The high for the day was 70°.

One more thing... Sunny said “ rocks and roots, they will tear you up”. He forgot to mention blackberry bushes... ouch 😖!

Till next time... Happy Hiking  🥾 

😋


“You gotta have passion for life and passion for something that you're going to get up and do,".    

                                Meredith “Sunny” Eberhart  

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