Franklin, NC

Our first day off the trail! After 10 days of solid walking, we were both ready for showers and resupply. We were picked up by Ronnie Havens (pictured right) in his school bus shuttle and dropped off here in Franklin to stay at his motel. He's quite the picker and singer: he treated us to some fine Chet Atkins renditions on Matt's backpacker guitar. He also regaled us with tales of local mountain folk and kept us in stitches all the way into Franklin.

ONE STATE DOWN...

...and thirteen to go. It was really rewarding, I can personally assure you, after days of grueling hiking, to finally reach this sign. However, we quickly learned that the hills of Georgia were simply a warm-up for the mountains of North Carolina. Just after this sign, the trail pointed itself straight up the spine of several punishing ascents. NC had us breathing hard!

TRAY MOUNTAIN

So we had five perfectly beautiful days on the trail, and then we climbed Tray Mountain. When we started up the mountain, it looked like the picture on the right here. Foggy, mysterious, kind of dreamlike. It quickly evolved into a brisk winter storm: freezing rain, fierce winds, almost zero visability. We got to the top of the mountain and set up our tent in the storm and basically just hid for the rest of the night. In the morning we hightailed it out of there as fast as we could! This has been our only bad weather experience so far.

THE FIRST FEW DAYS

THE FIRST FEW DAYS were absolutely beautiful. We could not have asked for more perfect weather or more astounding views. Sights like this are few and far between, and the climbs to see them usually difficult, but very worth it.

Springer Mountain

After a VERY long drive up US Forest Service road no. 42 (thanks again Brenda!), here we are suited up and ready to go. here we are about to hike 1 mile south to the summit of Springer, then retrace and begin the 2100 mile journey to Maine. As you can see, the weather was very nice.

HERE WE GO !!!

The title says it all...join us next time for real live trail news. By then we will have been eaten by bears, so I guess we'll just have a ghost writer....

CHEERS!

ABOUT US

that's anitra on the left...

and me up above...

today we finish pre-packaging all of our meals. they are as simple as mac n' cheez, and as complex as mixed vegetable couscous with spicy p-nut sauce. everything goes into ziplock bags with little instruction cards. we have 110 dinners and 110 breakfasts. it's 7:45 am. here we go!

Base Camp : Atlanta

welcome. to those who don't know us, we are anitra and matt from nashville, tennessee, and this is the story of our '07 thru hike of the appalatian trail. we have finally made it to atlanta, where we're spending a week preparing for our hike. the wonderful brenda griggers is hosting us this week and will be our lifeline throughout the journey, along with her intrepid yorkie, millie.

there's a picture of some of our supplies - sorry the formatting is bad, i'm just learning how to use this program. stay tuned for more updates!