The Lollygaggers

Many people find themselves paced with a similar group of people when they begin hiking.  After a couple of days you get to know each other's names, a bit of everyone's story, and even maybe give out some trail names.  Well, the gang that we have found ourselves hanging around the camp fire with is an interesting group of characters of course.  Some of the characters include Chuckles, Cookey, Nobody and Katherine,  Mohawk, and NoRush.  After taking an afternoon off in Hiawassee,  they texted us to inform us that as a group, they were now known as "The Lollygaggers".
I thought that this was brilliant!  Many hikers are trying to put in as many miles a day as possible, waking up at first kight and booking it out of camp.  While the rest of us tend to take our time. 
Well, two days ago the Lollygaggers decided that Kris and I move slow enough to officially become one of The Lollygaggers!

One of the biggest tips that we have received from former thru-hikers has been to keep your milage low for the first three weeks or so while your feet toughen up.  Often times people drop out because of blisters or intensely sore feet from trying to push so many miles right out of the gate.  Not that we would even be able to do that yet, so no worries here.  A 7 or 8 mile day has been plenty for me and my baby legs so far.  This Florida girl is just starting to figure out what it means to climb a mountain with 40 pounds on her back.  It means blisters, bruises, and muscles so sore you refer to ibuprofen as "trail candy".  It also means an overwhelming sense of relief when you make it to the top, even more so when there is a view.

Today we hiked 9 miles from the Tray Mountain Shelter just below the peak of Tray Mt to the Vista campsite East of mile marker 67.1.  There is quite a nice view just a little down the blue blaze trail.  You can see some town around a lake nestled in the mountains.   Beautiful.   The hile today was a good one with a fair climb up Kelly Knob rising over 900 feet within a mile.  We powerhoused up listening to some heavy metal during the walk up.  After 35 minutes, we made it to the summit, caught out breath, silently fist bumped, and straight went onto the descent.  

After every mountain you conquer,  there is another one just North of that one waiting.   It is easy to get discouraged,  but that is normally when I take off my pack and have a snack.  Most of the time, the fuel is all you need to get back to kicking butt (even if it feels like your kicking your own butt). 

Tomorrow we are heading into town briefly to pick up some more food.   There is supposed to be a meteor storm late at night, so we are trying to figure out where we will camp so that we can have a good view.  Tray Mountain would have been spectacular,  but that is a tough mountain right between two more tough mountains,  so I doubt that we will be backtracking there, besides,  as long as we are movig forward, it doesn't matter the pace, we are doing all right.

Oh, by the way, the rest of the Lollygaggers are about a day ahead of us.  We are slowly trying to catch up, but its pretty bad when you are behind the group known for lollygagging.