In the winter of 2012, I told a few close friends about my plan to quit my job and hike for 6 months. Some thought it was a great idea and others thought that it was crazy, but it was a plan that I set in my mind and there was no going back. I worked hard and saved as much as I could and the time just kept rolling on slowly. A start date of March 14th was set and a room was booked in Amicalola Falls State Park. Before I knew it, it was March 13th and I was starting the drive with my fiancé and my backpack. It was exciting and also extremely hard to leave my life behind with the thought of hiking for 6 months. We got to Amicalola Falls later that night with not much time to do anything other than sleep and mentally get ready for the next day. The sunrise that morning was beautiful, but the mood was heavy. I had a light breakfast because my stomach wasn’t having it. We got to the approach trail and then I was off for my adventure

The first 11 miles up to Springer Mountain made me realize even if I was running five miles a day in Florida, I wasn’t in shape for the trail. My legs did all they could to keep going. Once I made it to the start of the A.T, I was ready to keep going and take on the world! I made camp at the second shelter past Springer Mountain and got ready for a cold night. Before this trip, it had been a while since I did any camping and the first night reminded me of that fact. I didn’t get much sleep because I wasn’t thinking while I was packing and started out with a half body sleeping pad to cut weight. The next day I was the second person out of camp right behind “Sunshine” and planned on doing 10 miles that day. When I hit mile 9 I met “Doc”, “Iceman”, “Pumpkinhead”, and “Sunshine” near a creek. We all decided to push a little harder that day and hike a few extra miles. We found a clearing that was full of weekend campers doing trail magic with all the hikers. After I had two bowls of chili I passed out in my tent, little did I know when I woke up the next day I would have my trail name “Spider Kisser”. So my trail name sounds wrong, but let me tell you the back story. That night in my tent I woke up with a feeling of something crawling on my face and then right into my mouth. Extremely gross, I know, but that is how I got my trail name.