First day on trail (AT)

Well, this is it the start of our epic journey to our home State of Maine, my dad and I feel blessed to be able to do this together and to be able to do this at all.  Our day starts out with a great breakfast at The Amicalola Lodge where we met our first through hiker Flyer.  We both felt like this was such a sincere and nice human  and we asked him to join us for breakfast. We discussed many things, including the fact that his pack weighed probably 10 pounds less than ours. That was a bit discouraging however he was encouraging and told us that we would find ways to eliminate items.  Of course we had already done that as that morning we brought another load to the front desk for their hiker box to be brought down to the visitor center. Flyer had to go back down to the visitor center and register and then hike up the falls and continue on his journey on the approach trail. My dad and I had heard from several people that the approach trail was very difficult.  So after our breakfast, we went back to the room, gathered our things and made our way out the front door for the start.  We had a short walk down the road to the trail and there it was, the start of our journey. We proceeded and got on the approach trail. We were honestly overwhelmed with its beautiful condition and overall hiking trail quality. Is this what it’s like to hike Georgia? We kept waiting for the really bad stretches that we had heard about and honestly they never came. Wow we love Georgia so far. So we continue on and met many hikers who were very friendly and asked us where we were headed. People ask us if we were headed to Maine. Well when you’re from Maine it’s pretty special. We tell them we’re walking home.  This repeated itself many times and every time felt just as special as the last. We met our first dog Chipper who was our first therapy dog.  My dad and I miss our puppies and quite possibly as much or more than our humans. Because at the end of the day, our puppies probably don’t understand why we have suddenly departed their lives, whereas our family members do understand.  One couple in particular that we met was an older couple when I say older, I mean older than my dad who is 62. They were such a nice couple, the husband had thru hiked the AT back in the early 2000s. The wife was 350 miles short of completing the entire Appalachian Trail.  We asked when she was gonna do it and she said we’ll see. Not sure if I’ll be able to do it or not. I’d love to do it with my son. My dad told her wait a second really not an option. You need to tell him we are doing it and you need to do it.  And she responded, you know what okay, I think you’re right I’m gonna do this.  We were pleased to hear that many of her miles left were in New Hampshire and Maine..  We exchanged telephone numbers so that she could contact us when she does her journey so that we could give her some support. What a lovely couple. We spent a good 15 minutes with them. They were so kind and so excited about our father daughter adventure.  Well, we continued on still admiring this approach trail that many people had told us we would dread.  We met one additional through hiker named Will from Great Britain.  He was a nice fella and he passed us because we had stopped to speak to the older couple.  We have similar pace, but apparently he was not carrying much water so while he was filling his water, we passed him and did not see him again that day.  We finally did reach the summit of Springer Mountain again, reflecting on the fact that the approach trail was quite wonderful. Ron, our shuttle driver had told us that there’s one thing that everyone says when they get to the top of Springer. That phrase is “is this it?” Well I wasn’t really thinking of that when I was approaching the summit, but my dad actually said, is this it? The views were amazing some very expansive valleys.  One thing we have noticed in Georgia, the valleys are quite expansive and beautiful.  And since there are no leaves on the trees, you can see for quite a distance.  It truly is beautiful.  Well, after a short stop at the Summit and signing the book which we didn’t tell people where we were from, unfortunately, we continue on our journey. Our goal was to get the Hawk Mountain shelter so we kept plugging along. We continue to be so impressed with the Georgia Appalachian Trail. The weather was glorious the entire time and I told my dad he should bring sunglasses in spite of him saying it’s the green tunnel not needed.  Well I repeated it enough times prior to our journey, he succumb to my pressure and brought them and he was very thankful because he wore them all day.  We did not see anyone for an extended length of time, and we finally came upon to the Hawk Mountain camping area and it was only 3:45. My father and I looked at each other and both agreed that we can’t stop now. This is too early in the day and the weather was beautiful.  We were at mile 15. So we continued on and knew that we had one last stop before a 7 mile stretch and thought that we would camel up there which would provide us enough water to stay within that 7 mile stretch and have enough water to drink and cook our food. Well, we come upon the water spot. We were 10 minutes filling 3 L of water and using our 2 -0.75  mL bottles as our dirty water bottles that we screw the filters on so we can do a quick fill up at streams.  My dad had been doing that for most of the afternoon.  So we continued on and decided to call my husband Ryan to see if he could look ahead in the book to see if they were some camping options for us.  My dad could see none on far out. There was a parking lot, but nobody recommends staying in parking lots due to the easy public access.  We continued on over a couple of mountains and we did see some promising areas that people had camped. We finally came across a beautiful campsite at the top of another mountain and we both looked at each other and thought it was too nice to pass up and we were not sure what was up ahead.  This would give us ample time to set up camp for the first time and be ready to settle into our tent before dark.  We set up our bear bag hangs immediately as we were instructed by the visitor center training staff.  We found a beautiful tree with a massive limb that was a good 20 feet in the air.  We were quite successful in getting the rock bag over and setting up for future attachment of our food bags.  We were both overwhelmed with the beauty of our site and felt so fortunate to have it to ourselves. We set up the tent, pumped up our mattresses and prepared our sleeping bags and sleeping bag liners, and we were ready to cook our food.  We had some wonderful backpacking meals, double entrées ready for preparation and they certainly were delicious.   It did take us some time to do all of this and we were very happy that we chose to stop here.  Prior to eating our dinner a couple and their son came by and they were continuing on.  The father looked at his spouse and son and said hey is this where we saw the copperhead last time?  My dad and I thought that was unnecessary and they knew we were from Maine so I’m sure they knew we had a snake phobia. They were a very nice couple and they didn’t mean any harm from their comment but it did make my dad and I stop and think for a moment. We are a bit out of our element.  Once dinner was complete we got into our tent after successfully hanging our food bags. Keep in mind the second one had to be hung in the dark because I am a slow eater. He seemed a tad annoyed by that.  While it’s off to bed in the tent, we were very cozy wrapping up some final items on our phones and my dad’s iPad. We FaceTimed the fam. Going to sleep both feeling tremendously blessed for this opportunity.