Here we go!

Well, this is it!
I can hardly believe that this is really happening.

First of all, I would like to say thank you to all our friends at one of our primary outfitters over at Lewis and Clark for all their advice and all the great gear they offer with said advice, and to everyone at The Wooden Spoon for all their encouragement!

Day 1
Mom and Dad drove us to the parking lot at the top of Springer Mountain, and walked with us to the official start of the A.T. and after a we made our Good bye, Daniel and I started down the trail.
And it is a beautiful trail, the weather was mostly cloudy and a little bit wet, and the clouds surrounded the hills around us.

So far we've met four other thru-hikers that started today, a friendly guy from Missouri named Taylor, two other guys, and a lady.

We only hiked ten miles today, but we figured that we should take things easy these first few days especially, and so we wouldn't have to set up camp in the rain. (Plus there was this weird tree that we ate under!)

Day two
We got a very early start today at around six this morning and got hiking when things were still dark.
It rained lightly the night before and we had to deal with a damp tent, but for the most part we stayed dry.
As we were stopes to fill our water pouches, a man asked if we could filter some water for him, and we happily helped him out as it turned out he was a German man here in the US as an exchange student.
Him and his friend are on spring break.

Today we had our first taste of "trail magic" when a couple of guys were having a little cook out for all us hikers.
It was here that we met Ramblin' Rose, a rather kind lady that we've been hiking with most of the day.

It's now day three and quite frankly I don't at all feel like writing anything. (but I am anyway.)
This was our first time on the Appalachian rollercoaster, where you go from a high to low and back again in a roundtable of emotion.
It can be influenced in a multitude of ways, you can hike in the rain for a mile and a half, feel awful, then you reach the outfitter at Neels gap!
You breath a sigh of relief, get out of the rain, pick up a few post cards, wait out the rain, and you're on your way!
Then you fall back in to the mode of hiking, stop and set up camp on the least wet place you can find, start cooking dinner...and then you see your hands(again)...and you realize that they've been dirty for three days straight and you want them clean.
But you can't get them totally clean with hand sanitizer.
You reach a low.
Then you smell dinner, and it smells amazing, and then the wind blows in such a way that your tent dries out at last!
You're at a high.
Then dinner gets knocked over....

Over all though, I can't complain about the weather, it hasn't rained as much as they were calling for, and we made it to Hiawassee before it rained today (Day five).

And as promised a shout out to everyone back at work!
Hi Sue, Becky, Lauren, Jodi, Jenna, Mom, Jane, Stacy, Miriam, Shelby, Brook, Diane, Kelsie, Luke, Sharla,Misti, Janae, Brenda, And Brenda, Martha, Barbara, Tiffany, Shana, Chad, Cam, Rochelle, Stephanie, Sarah, Carlene , and Serena

Wish us luck! And God be with you!
Happy PI day of the Century!

Pictures: Us in our first camp site, Daniel leaning against a weird tree, A friendly cat at Neels gap, Me on Blood Mountain, and Daniel Taking a picture on blood mountain.