It rained again right before daylight, everything is a wet muddy mess. Keeping your gear and yourself clean is impossible. The funny thing about it is that the longer you are out here, the less keeping clean really seems to matter. I have a new appreciation for how it must feel to be homeless. I always wondered how homeless people could stand to be so dirty all the time. Now I understand that once you get used to it, it doesn’t really bother you to be dirty very much. It only makes you self conscious when you hitch a ride, or walk into town. In the woods, it totally doesn’t matter.

By the time we packed up we were good and filthy. We didn’t care because we only had a short hike to Dick’s Creek Gap then we would hitch a ride to Hiawassee, resupply, eat some real food, and most importantly take a zero on the 18th.

We hiked down into Dick’s Creek well before noon. As we came out on the trailhead, a husband and wife who had camped at Deep Creek with us the night before called out to us and asked us if we needed a ride somewhere.

We told them we were headed to Hiawassee and they said they would be happy to give us a ride to our motel. You see Deets, all that worrying about how we were going to get a ride into town on Easter Sunday was for nothing.