Day 9, 6-23

We set out and did pretty well this day, covering about 16-17 miles or so. After several hours of hiking, we met up with a couple that we thought we had left in the dust a long time ago, Mark and Gretchen. They didn't have trail names yet, but they were wrapping up their trip. They had planned to make it into Franklin on day 10, about 100 miles from Springer. It would have worked out to about 10-10 miles days. Not impossible for just starting, but they didn't have anything like walking sticks, which help so very much. We spoke with them for a while. They had taken a ride into Helen, and found it much the same as Caleb and I found Hiawassee: crowded, busy, dirty, and gross. We wandered on from that point, and attacked 'Standing Indian Mountain', a rather formidable edifice in front of us. While the climb was not steep, it was very long. About 2-3 miles of steady uphill. Even though it was a gentle incline, that long gets a little long. At this point, we're running a little low on water, and we're both not the happiest with this situation. We get to the top and run into a grandfather (maybe?) and two kids, with backpacks on, but school type, not backpacking type. We spoke with them to a bit, and they seemed to be really excited about the prospect of finding Ruby in the rocks there. Apparently they had loaded up their packs with loose rock, and were going to try and harvest rubies. I have two problems with this. 1: The outdoors are for enjoyment. Leave it there for others to enjoy. Don't take anything, leave no trace, all that. Those principles are very important to me. To every backpacker. 2: The kids. The older guy didn't have a pack. The two kids did. They were apparently the ones that were carrying...who knows how much rocks in their pack. I'm sure the thought went to through my head at least once: man this pack feels like a ton of bricks. For them, that's what they were carrying. Does that fall under child labor?
Anyway, we're on top, and I'm starting to get a little loopy. More than usual. Caleb noticed it as well, and so we spend a total of 2 seconds on top of things, then head off. Our water was really low, so we look around, but after bushwacking for way too long, figured that we'd be better off getting to the trail and getting to the next water a bit down the way. So we get back, I stumbling along, and Caleb, who was probably worried about me getting dehydrated, passing out, and making him carry me to the next water, doing his thing. We get to a nice little spot with water purportedly nearby, but we can't hear it. That's a big thing...so he goes left, I go right, and we're wandering down this trail, looking for water. It was a neat intersection of two trails, with lots of nice open flat space there, perhaps the ideal spot for a camping area. I found a damp area that gradually increased to a trickle, and from that to a pool. I hobble back to the intersection, unpack my camelbak, and Caleb and I wander down with our 1 c measure for scooping. Since we were drinking from...a small pool of water in a ring of stones, we needed to dip water from it. So we dipped for quite a while...filled a Nalgene, then poured it in a camelbak, and repeated until everything was full. Then we drank some, dipped more to replace that, ate a energy bar, and kept on till later that night. We swung by a shelter that had a very sad entry with it. Someone was getting ready to leave the trail, they were done with the rain and were leaving as soon as they hit a major town (Franklin in a few miles). I wrote a lengthy entry about why I backpacked and why I was on the trail in the first place. While I didn't really need the reminder, it was nice to have a solid something or other to grab onto.

Caleb by the 'NC Tree', a gnarled Oak that is the unofficial border to NC.

















I'm sitting on a neat branch/tree, after watering and feeling better, showing 1 and 5 fingers, signifying the 15 miles we had pulled down at that moment.










Cool flowery things I needed a picture of.













A neat looking stream bed. The flash didn't work out so well, and the no flash didn't either, but looked better than the flash version, so that's what this is.
















If you squint really hard you can see Caleb cleaning his toes and looking beefy. Because he's ripped.