(Part 2) Vacation- Hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains and on the AT

Part 2 of vacation - Hiking the AT with Tom

Note: Prior to this trip I had only backpacked twice for 1 night each and never multiple days. Tom has done several multi-day hikes and on the AT in Virigina. I was glad to have Tom along, as I would never do this alone.

Sunday 9-18-11
After finishing a very nice 8 days with my wife in the Smoky Mountains it was on to meeting Tom to start our hike in Georgia on the AT. Sunday was a long travel day as Debbie and I drove from Townsend to Kuttawa, KY (300miles) to meet Tom who was driving my car from home to pick me up (280 miles) and head south to Amicalola Falls state park, GA (another 320 miles). Approx miles/time from home to GA was 600 miles/9.5 hours.
We got there at 6:20pm ET and signed in the AT book as section hikers. My trail name was "Guide Boy" (name from my lovely wife) and Tom was "Bison Tom" (what else would he be??) We settled into the Max Epperson shelter on the start of the AT approach trail, which is about 9 miles up to Springer Mt, which is the offical start of the AT. Yes, we had to hike that far before we even started the AT!! Tom got a fire going, it was 65deg and cloudy. We hung our food by rope in a tree. This was day 1 of not shaving, Tom told me you can't shave on a backpack trip. I listened to Tom since he has the backpacking experience. It was 9pm ET when we layed down to sleep. As we layed down Tom asked me if I knew about shelter mice??