Hiking the AT (to avoid cleaning house)

Today, after spending most of Saturday cleaning house and starting into it today, I had had enough. It took me a good nine months to get the house into "C.H.A.O.S." (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome) and it may take me half as long to get it back into some kind of order, especially just working weekends. What I thought would take an hour took three. What I assumed I could finish in a few minutes is taking an hour. I hate housework.

So to flee the housework, Casey and I went hiking. (Forgot the camera.) I let her lead and she wanted to hike the AT rather than a blue blazed trail to a shelter we often visit. So, up and over we go from Hog Pen Gap to Testatee Gap. It's my least favorite mile of the AT. The roadwalk from Testatee (the signs say Tesnatee) to Hog Pen Gap was one of the last roadwalks relocated to a trail. This trail goes UP, is rocky, and is a useless PUD (Pointless Up and Down), when a lovely roadwalk produces some lovely scenery and the awesome 'rock face' from the same mountain over which the relocated trail traverses. The 'rock face' seems to me to have real faces staring out towards the North. I see Native faces staring straight ahead in the rocks. The mountain was blasted by drilling into the rock and stuffing dynamite which was exploded, sending the rock in many directions. Had they not created the opening for the road (which, had they not built, would make the Appalachian Trail section from Neel Gap to Unicoi Gap one of the longest with no trailhead), the rock faces of the Natives would have gone undiscovered.

The history of this area of Georgia is not a happy one if you are Cherokee or Creek.
So much land, so many broken treaties. I think the faces which I see in the rocks stand as sentries, guarding the memories of those who lived in the area before the Western Europeans appeared as immigrants and then took over as if they 'owned' the place.

History aside, we roadwalked back to the car and then drove home.

This is a photo of Casey from a few years ago. She appears to be a sentinel, too.