Sunday, April 17th

We woke up at our camping spot around 7:30 this morning. I made a fire and proceeded to cook oatmeal. I used the fire instead of the burner this time just to try it out and save our propane. After oatmeal we packed up and walked until we got to Unicoi Gap which was about 2 miles. We did not rest until we got to Unicoi which was an impressive feat. We rested at Unicoi and got some granola bars then went up Rocky Mountain. We had lunch at the top of Rocky. The night before we planned to have 2 half lunches. Meaning, we would eat half of our lunch on top of Rocky Mountain, and the other half on top of Tray Mountain. We proceeded to eat our first half lunch on top of Rocky and we met two hikers with trail names of Dirty Bowl and Salami. We interviewed both of them at the top and then they went on their way. We then left and made the trek to Tray Mountain. Rocky and Tray were two really tough mountains as we literally ascended 1000ft in elevation, then descended 1000ft, and then ascended another 1500ft until finally going back down another 1000ft in elevation. Georgia was said to be the toughest parts of the trail due to the rigid, up and down terrain. After Tray we hiked down and we planned on caping at Steeltrap Gap. We finally got to Steeltrap and we saw two dudes who took the camping spot there. I was kind of dehydrated and I was all out of water so we had to hike half a mile down the mountain to re-fill our water. After hiking down, we figured we could just set up our enos down here and sleep at this spot. There were no camping spots down there but we made it work. We scavenged for flat ground since we needed to make dinner so we sort of made our own flat ground. We made dinner and the two dudes came down to get water. We were talking and then they asked us if we were doing a school project out here. Apparently, word got around that we were on the trail doing a project. So, we told them about our project and then we interviewed them. We are now finishing dinner and planning our day tomorrow. We have to get to Dick's Creek, which is 9 miles away, so we need our rest. We have been eating a lot of the food and we think we didn't get enough at Neels so we're going to try and get to Dick's Creek a day early to resupply. We don't really know what to expect out of Dick's Creek and I think it's going to be a lot different than the store at Neels.