Day 25 - Georgia to Maine 2026

Vista of Hot Springs, Tennessee

Starting mile 272.1

This morning I got moving before 6:30 am because I only had 3.2 miles into town and a wonderful breakfast. I was able to hit the trail by 6:45 am and I was hoping to get to Hot Springs by 8:15 am. This was very doable because it was mainly downhill. I was cruising and before you know it I was already walking into town. I looked down to see the time, and it was only 7:45 am. I had made the three miles in about an hour. I was flying down the mountain!

When I got to the Smokey Mountain Diner I found a couple of other thru hikers and joined them for breakfast. I hadn’t met either of them before, but we all knew we were thru-hikers. It is a great thing about the thru hiker community, you might have never met them before, and you might never see them again, but you have an instant bond. These two were from Belgium and are having a great time on the trail. They are taking a zero in town and are moving a lot slower than I am, so I’ll probably never see them again, but we had a great breakfast together.

After breakfast I went to the outfitters to charge up my battery, I need to get it to half a charge before I leave town, otherwise I won’t have enough power for my phone. While I was at the outfitter’s I was finally able to get a new CNOC water bag. My old one sprang a leak a hundred miles ago and I’ve been on the lookout for a replacement bag. I’ll finally be able to get more than a liter of water at a time.

The other thing that I was really excited about is that I finally caught up to the first group of the ‘Wounded Warriors’. Every year that organization fully equips and supports 20 Veterans to hike the trail. They start out in two groups of ten about a week apart. For the first seven to ten days, they are fully supported, then they tend to break into smaller groups of three or four. I completely missed the group that started the day before me, and I was hoping to catch the group that started a week earlier.

I met “Frodo” who currently lives in South Carolina and got out of the army last year. There was also “Basco” from Texas who’s been out the army for a few years. There was a third that I didn’t really get a chance to talk with. I really enjoyed getting to talk to them. I guess there is another group of three a couple of days ahead, maybe I’ll catch them.

I’ve known about this organization for years and have always thought it was such a great program. They are always looking for more funding so they can send more Veterans out.

I hung around the outfitters until lunch. I grabbed a burger and talked with Bill, another thru hiker, while we ate. After lunch I hit the trail. I figured I’d go five miles up the trail and find a place to stay. 8.2 miles later I found somewhere to camp. I ended up doing 11.5 miles and about 3,000 feet of elevation gain for the day, a lot more than I figured I would do Ending mile 283.6

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