Date: 2004-03-24
From: Mt. Collins Shelter

To: Newfound Gap
Miles today: 4.5
Weather: scattered clouds

I think every person in the damn shelter was snoring last night. It was insane. My earplugs fell out and I couldn't find them to put them back in. I don't know that it would have done much good anyway. I seriously waited in my sleeping bag for what must have been damn near 2 hours until I saw just a HINT of daylight. And I was up. If I had a good headlamp, I would have left the shelter a long time before that.    I saw a pamphlet in the shelter about what to do if you should encounter a bear. I told Heather and Arwen about it and told them what the step-by-step instructions were. Of course, once alone, I found myself getting nervous anytime I entered some heavy vegetation, quickly looking anytime I heard a noise in the forest.    Found out through a shelter register that Bloody and Joy have caught up with Burn. Turns out he's only a day and a half ahead of us.    At Newfound Gap, we waited a little while until Heather's dad (Jim) and his girlfriend (Karen) came to pick us up. They brought fresh fruit, cheese danish, and hot chocolate. I have been craving fresh fruit for the past 3 days.    They drove us into Gatlinburg with a quick stop at the Ranger Station/ Smoky Mountains Visitor's Center. The place was FULL of tourist-type families and we got plenty of strange looks being dressed the way we were. Funny how many people in a National Park visitor's center have never seen a hiker. But I guess when they hike, or most of the hikers they're used to seeing, are day-hikers. You know, clean and not just comfortable, but styling. Thru-hikers don't care about style.    And "clean" is a luxery.    Gatlinburg was a surprise. We had been used to really small mountain towns. Gatlinburg was not one of these towns. It was a tourist trap. Lots of chain restaraunts and ridiculous tourist attractions. There was an Elvis Museum and even a Ripley's Believe it or Not museum and an aquarium also run by Ripley's.    That's right. An aquarium. In a "mountain town." Believe it or not.    Jim treated us to breakfast, and treated us again to dinner at Outback Steakhouse. We were spending the night at Karen's parents summer house in Gatlinburg where we were able to shower and do laundry and use the massage chair. That's right. A massage chair. And I had a beer. And we had some wine. And we went out for ice cream in Pigeon Forge, the hometown of Dolly Parton where tourists can visit nearby Dollywood. I'm not kidding.    Gatlinburg was...interesting. Reminded me of a hybrid of Disneyworld and some sort of boardwalk town.    When we got back to the house, Jim told us that he had one of those strip maps of the AT. I believe this is approximately the area that Bill Bryson and his buddy Katz also looked at the strip map and realized, "We were never going to walk to Maine." I knew it was going to be painful, but I looked anyway.    We un-rolled the map a little ways until we saw Atlanta and then Springer Mountain, where we started a long 24 days ago.    Un-roll it a little more and we saw the Georgia-North Carolina border and I remembered that horrible climb about 2 weeks ago.    A little more revealed Fontana Lake and the entrance of the Smokies. Just a few days ago. And just above that was Newfound Gap, where we got off the trail today.    And then the map un-rolled some more. And more.    And more and more and more and more and more.    And still more.    To risk sounding like a part straight from Bill Bryson's book, we had only accomplished the length of finger on a map that extended from my belly button to about a foot above my head. We still got a long, long way to go.