March 4th - Day 3

We woke up around 8:00 and we weren't positive how far we were hiking. We were a little quicker to pack up the tent and gear this morning; we were hiking before 9:30. Today we decided that my trail name was going to be No Rush because I'm always taking long and Sofia tends to complain while I take my time making sure everything is exactly how I want it. Sofia's trail name is now Hot Hands because the circulation in her hands apparently isn't very good, and she decided to bring 10 pairs of hot hands. With our newly given trail names we were off to Neels Gap where we were set on staying at the hostile there. 

climbing up Blood Mountain

We climbed up the 6th highest summit in GA, Blood Mountain, which was a tough snowy climb but the view at the top was fantastic and worth it. Neels Gap was located directly across the street at the bottom of Blood Mountain and we had read in a shelter journal that there was pizza, we were very excited. Once we checked into the hostel for the night we found out there wasn't pizza but a delicious barbecue chicken and pork chop dinner with baked beans cooked by the hostel owner Pirate. Pirate was exactly what I envisioned when I thought of an AT hostel owner, an older man who had a funny walk about him, probably from the rumor I heard that he's thru hiked the AT 4 times in his life, and of course he had a huge beard and spoke with an extremely heavy southern drawl. The hostel was a basement room with 8 bunk beds that all had someone sleeping in them that night. The group varied from older thru hikers in their late 50s to early 60s to college kids just like me, taking a semester off to thru hike the AT, also a couple section hikers from Michigan that were on spring break. My favorite older thru hikers were two gentlemen trail named Blue Moon and Dixie. Blue moon was from upstate New York and loved to talk, but not in an annoying way I truly liked conversing with him and he showed us a fun card game called 31, real good guy. Dixie was from Mississippi and he started the AT on his 60th birthday with the aspiration of thru hiking. I also met 2 guys that happen to go to Georgia Tech and were in the same frat as Casey and Dan (buddies from Roswell) named Michael and Matt, they hiked the first couple days with a 21 year old from florida named Ross. Although we heard the weather was going to be bad the next day Sofia, Michael, Matt, Ross, and I were motivated to hike 11 miles to low gap shelter despite the rainy rumors we were hearing. Blue Moon and Dixie got a cabin with a few other older thru hikers near Neels Gap to take a zero and stay out of the nasty weather. It was the first night in a few nights I got to sleep in a bed and it was well worth the $16 stay.

Sofia and I atop Blood Mountain

Sofia always makes friends with random cats

bunks at the Walasayi Inn, Neels Gap, GA

Blue Moon and I