Hiawassee, Georgia
It’s early days- I’m just 70 miles in, resupplying in this great town. They get a ton of thru-hikers here and provide a free shuttle from the trailhead, about a 15 minute ride. About two hours from now the mayor does a free “hiker feed” in the town square with burgers, dogs, etc. so naturally I’m heading there soon.
The story so far has been trail magic. I’ve been served trail-side burgers, taco soup, a big salad bar, peach cobbler baked over a camp fire in a Dutch oven and pancakes and bacon this morning. I was worried about early mileage but my feet and body have been feeling great and I’m just 9 miles from crossing into North Carolina, so no complaints as I breezed through Georgia in 5 days.
It rained heavily again last night, but only during the hours I was in my tent sleeping, so other than trudging on a muddy trail, it didn’t impact me much. For the past two nights I’ve heard very loud owls close by, either mating or fighting or just communicating, something I’ve never heard before. I’ve been prayed over twice by Christian outreach groups- I hope they don’t cancel each other out ☺.
That’s all for now, am trying to upload several new videos to my YouTube playlist, but the bandwidth here is sparse so we’ll see. Love to all and all the best. Max