With the storms running through the area last night, the electricity kept going on and off in part of the hostel. Fortunately, I was awake and up often enough (read bladder issues) to notice and move my items that needed to get charged into the bathhouse. Every time I moved, the cat woke up and readjusted position. By 5a, she was getting playful so I kicked her out of the room—I had no guilt that it was raining (lightly).
We were all packed up and ready to go at just before 9. Postcard came in and said the coffee shop was looking pretty good considering the rain. I agreed, but Bunny wanted miles on the trail. We thought Patches agreed with Bunny, but when we headed out the door, she was no where to be found. Apparently, she fell victim to the procrastination affect of rain and jumped on the shuttle to town. Her daily average to be done by May keeps increasing. We think Lady Bug and Stickers are heading out, but we’ve thought that before when they ended up taking another zero (but that was a $3.78 Lady Bug delay—the cost of two drinks for the hot tub).
The trail was not very busy at all today. I think we are at the tail end of the Gatlinburg “snow bubble” and the fast hikers from the March bubble have all passed us. Once again, we have an uncrowded trail. With any luck, we will be able to stay in the lull all the way to Damascus.
Furry Little Animal was the first to pass us. We met him last night on the shuttle to Wal-Mart. He loves to walk and is averaging 20+ miles every day. He also hiked the Camino de Santiago last October after the busy season where we hiked it in May before the busy season.
Next to pass us was a recently retired man from Northern Georgia. I don’t know how we haven’t met him before because we know all the same people. He has been planning on thru-hiking for over 20 years. He was reluctant to call it trail magic, so he’s calling it a “Trail Blessing”—he became a first time grandpa just a few days ago when hiking between Devil Fork Gap and Sams Gap. He got the call that his daughter was in labor and he was able to get off trail in time to be there for the birth of his grandson.
The only other person to pass us today was Red Robin. He started on March 14 and is averaging well over 20 miles a day. He hasn’t taken a single day off and only been in one town since he began hiking—it’s hard to skip Hot Springs since the trail runs through the middle of town. He’s in a rush because he starts medical school at Penn State on July 15. I wonder if he’s really having a chance to enjoy the trail at the pace he’s going—he doesn’t see any of the sights just off of the trail, but the same can be said for most of the high speed wave of the March bubble.
We got to near the top of Unaka Mountain and saw a decorated Christmas tree off the side of the trail. I don’t know what happened to the guy, but Max’s family set up the tree as a memorial to him. There was a log book for people to sign in his memory. When Bunny caught up with me, she said Guthook was showing that we were at our designated campsite.
It was down to 30 and had been hailing/raining for the last hour. There was no water any where around. We checked the guide and saw that we had missed our turn for the camping spot about a half mile back. We decided to push on to get off of the mountain cause of the deteriorating conditions. When we got to the top of Unaka Mountain, we decided to camp in the dense spruce forest because we were too cold and tired to push on.
We hurriedly set up the tent. I boiled what water we had so we could have a hot drink before bed in the hopes of warming us up. In hindsight, we would have been better off using it to make a hot water bottle instead. We ate a cold supper of protein bars, snickers, and animal crackers with our hot tea. I hung such a lousy bear bag that Mizman’s poor job at Cold Spring Shelter looked good (a drunken raccoon could have gotten his). I guess I was hoping that no bears would be out on such a crappy night.
EFG