Thinking Ahead

Boy, what a difference a day makes.  A front passed through early Sunday morning bringing thunderstorms and behind it, much cooler temperatures.  Today dawned bright and sunny, but only 40 degrees at 7 AM.

I think Gene and I both have had our fill of the dry, sandy trails here in Florida for this year.  We’re longing for the mountains.  We wanted to get a little exercise today, but opted for the paved Withlacoochee State Trail.

We saw dogwood in bloom today.  First time this year.

Maybe it’s just a case of hitch itch.  We’ve been here 6 weeks and are looking for a change of scenery.  Besides that, we’re anxious to see family.  Much of our conversation over the past few days has revolved around our plans after leaving here.

We only have one commitment this spring and that is Gene’s summons to jury duty the last week in March.  We don’t have to be back in Nashville until then, and we don’t want to get there much earlier than that to avoid any lingering winter weather.

After Nashville, we want to make a bee line for the Smokies.  Spring wildflowers in the mountains are just gorgeous and I want to be there for the display.  With that in mind, we decided to make our visit in Nashville on the front end of jury duty rather than afterwards.

Also entering into our thoughts has been the drive north on I-75 through Georgia.  First of all, we want to stop in Perry to visit with my brother and his family.  Since everybody there works, weekends are the best time for quality visiting.  We’ve got that all worked out for next weekend.

Not wanting to get to Nashville before the following weekend, we were looking around for some hiking to occupy our time.  North Georgia seems like a perfect spot--colder temperatures and some real mountains to climb.  There might even be a few thru-hikers in the area needing a little trail magic.

We haven’t done much hiking in North Georgia, so have been reading the hiking blogs and looking at the maps to get some ideas.  A 10-mile loop hike Jermm’s Outside posted about a few weeks ago caught our attention.  We put that on the list.  I would also like to hike up Blood Mountain southbound on the AT from Neel’s Gap.  The morning we hiked through there on our Georgia section in 2003 it was so foggy, we didn’t have any views.  I’m sure we’ll come up with something.

So, we have a rough plan on the drawing board.  We’ll revise and refine as the week progresses, but for now we expect to pull out of here Thursday or Friday.

That’s it for today.  Thanks for tagging along.