Sasscrotch, Luke, and their 4 dogs ended up setting up their tents and leaving us alone in the 16person shelter. We felt bad for them in the morning since it rained hard on and off all night. The rain and the dark kept us in our sleeping bags a bit late again but we were hiking before 8. Less than 15 minutes into the trail I was startled by 3 hounds streaking towards me, about 5 more followed – all decked out in collars with little radars on them. No sign of an owner, though.

It was another soggy day – possibly even wetter than yesterday. Early in the day we summoned Mt Albert with a view of nothing – it had a fire tower but there wasn’t much point in climbing up. We split lunch into 2 so we could have 2 breaks in shelters out of the rain. We also went up Standing Indian Mountain, but the AT skirted the summit (we were still in the clouds anyway). The trail was pretty fast walking today – lots of rhododendron tunnel, and gradual ups and downs. But, it was also very wet, and pretty slick in places where there was mud or rocks. We both had quite a few awkward slides and slips we recovered from.

We hit our end-day goal of 21 miles at a shelter around 4:15pm, so decided to tack on another 7. It was starting to seem a bit drier around this time but that was just to fool us, it started raining and wind-raining water from the trees on us again shortly. We crossed into Georgia – our last state! – around 5:30 and got to the next shelter around 7, where we called it for the night. Long, wet day!

It was clouded in and grey when we got up but not raining as we headed next door for breakfast. Breakfast at the Top of Georgia comes with a printed sheet of the “local weather  forecast for the Appalachian Trail”. Today, the forecast was: 100% chance of scattered thunderstorms. We put on our wet shoes then Thomas from the hostel gave us a lift the 1/2 mile to the trail and we were hiking by 8am.

The first thing we did was hike up and out of dick’s gap and (drumroll, please!) above the clouds!!! We checked out a Vista side trail and had a nice view to the east overlooking the valley. We hiked the “toughest 16 miles of Georgia” – dick’s gap to Unicoi gap – before 3pm. This included the whoop-de-whoops. Apparently, once you’ve hiked 2100 miles, three back to back 1000ft climbs only made my radar as “whoop-de-whoops”. So, I guess we’re in hiking shape then??

After Unicoi gap we hiked another 14 miles to finish our day at Low Gap, 43 miles from the end! From around 4pm the 6pm we were listening to some pretty ominous thunder, and we were walking pretty quickly to try to beat the rain. Luckily, the last 4-5 miles of our day was really easy road grade trail. We missed the rain, though – we got to the shelter and the storm just kind of passed us by. We’re sharing a shelter with a flip-flopper named No Hurry, and 2 section hikers from New Hampshire.