Georgia
Well, this is where it all began. On April 2nd, my wife and I arrived at Amacolola Falls state park in northern Georgia. We met up with Pete (an old friend of mine that wanted to hike too) and tried to prepare ourselves for the long road (trail) ahead. Now, my wife did not go with me... she understood that this was some thing I had always wanted to do and she supported it. (Cool huh? More on this later...) Anyway, early Saturday morning (April 3rd) Pete and I are standing on Springer MT in our nice clean clothes with our expensive backpacking gear. Here we go....
Pete is on the right and that's me on the left. We are so ready! We Just came from NY where the temp was about 40 and now it's about 80 in the mountains...
We survive the first day and this is what we wake up to... how scenic.
Day 2 and we got our asses kicked... it was about 85 degrees and I was getting burnt bad. I only went 6 miles, found a real nice stream (Justice creek) and set up camp. A whole bunch of other people did too... The guy with no shirt is Tiki and in back of him is Quicksilver. (oh yeah, out there you get a trail name.... something that describes you... Pete and I don't have any.... yet.)
The next day, Pete gets real sick... probably the heat. I was still getting burned pretty bad. When we got to a road, Pete hitch-hiked to town and I kept going. I started hiking with these two guys... Joel (with the hemp hat) and Quicksilver. We stayed in blood mountain shelter that night and it started to get cold. First I was burnt and then frozen!
Here is Quicksilver saying "hi" Georgia style. Were at Mulls motel and Quicksilver is really helping me out. He shows me how to pack my backpack and what food I should be eating. He's from Georgia and he knows the area. He gets us rides all over town by jumping into intersections, opening peoples car doors and telling them he likes their "John Deere" hat. That's the south for ya. We also give Joel a trail name. He's Now know as "Spliff" because of his deep devotion to hemp and all it's uses. Pete is now known as "Grumpy Squat" because as quicksilver put it... "he was about 3 feet off the trail squatin' a grumpy!" (Taking a crap) Pete hates this. I'm called A-rab because I was covered head to toe to try and keep the sun off me. Quicksilver quote "You look like a damn A-rab!"
Georgia took about 7 days to complete. I met a whole bunch of hippies like the Rainbow People... they were a bunch of people that lived on a "farm" in Florida and decided to walk to Pennsylvania for the Rainbow Gathering. (I met them when they were swimming naked in a river) Huma, Spinning Jenny, T-max , Modus (later called pink), LT , Rubicon, Moez-ass and Boo were some other hikers I spent time with.
Some other highlights of Georgia... Rubicon Taught me how to hitch-hike (I'm from NY, you NEVER hitch hike here) and Moez-ass got hit on by some homo that gave him a ride to town. Now, that's funny!
One last picture of me livin' large in Georgia.