Date: 2016-05-07
From: Stealth Camp Near Hampton, TN

To: Vandeventer Shelter 
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: few clouds

I apologize for the fact that I have not posted for several days. I post based on the availability of a computer, and I hit a dry spot, where I did not have access to a computer for several days. Many people have been asking if I am ok, and yes, I am fine . My computer skills are minimal at best. While attempting to post yesterday's entry, I somehow got locked out, so today's post will tell what happened both yesterday and today. Yesterday, I had a very short day, (7.5 miles) due to the fact that the shelter I intended to stay at (Watauga Lake Shelter) was closed due to negative bear/hiker encounters. The shelter had been closed for the past 2 years due to this problem, then reopened briefly again this year, then reclosed, due to a recurrence of the bear problem. The rumor mill says that some local people who were bored and wanted to create a little excitement deliberately left large quantities of dog food at the shelter in order to bring the bears back. I do not know if there is any truth to this rumor. A four mile stretch of the AT, from US321 to Wilbur Dam Road was closed to overnight camping. It has been deemed safe for hikers to hike through during daylight hours. When I walked through that area, I felt a little uneasy, but saw no evidence of bears. My original plan was to pay $15 to camp at a public camping ground located just before the 4 mile area closed to camping, but I guess a little bit of the AT hiker mentality of "why should I pay to camp when I can stealth camp for free?" crept in, so I found a stealth camp just before US 321 (it did not have a water source or a privy) and pitched my tent. Some people get careless and do not store their food bag from a rope hanging from a tree overnite while they sleep. They use their food bag as a pillow for their head at night. There are stories of bears ripping done tents to get at the food they can smell inside. With stories of rampaging bears just a few miles away, I was very careful to store my food from a rope in a tree while I slept. A day earlier, a hiker told me that one of the most revered and colorful characters among AT hikers, Baltimore Jack, a man who had through hiked the entire AT (2,200 miles) eight times, had died suddenly of congestive heart failure at age 53. As I had seen Baltimore Jack only a month earlier, and as he seemed to be ok, this came as quite a surprise to me. He was a very well loved and respected man, and he will be greatly missed. The next morning, I hiked 9.1 miles to Vandeventer Shelter. My guidebook said there was a picnic place, with a flush toilet and a drinking fountain just a mile from where I had stealth camped the night before. As I had an urgent need for the flush toilet, as well as a need to replenish my drinking water, I hurried to the spot. I considered myself to be living high off the hog when I reached the indoor plumbing facility: a very rare double luxury of a flush toilet, plus a drinking fountain, which meant I did not have to filter my water prior to drinking it. While I THOROUGHLY enjoyed my visit to the flush toilet, I got a big surprise when I drank the water from the drinking fountain. I did not like the taste of the water I was drinking, and I realized the unpleasant taste was due to the chlorine in the water. When you drink chlorinated water every day, you get used to the taste of chlorine. However, for several weeks, I had been drinking water I filtered from streams, and myself and other hikers have decided it is some of the best tasting water we have ever drank. I did not expect that I would come to prefer filtered stream water over chlorinated water.