Date: 2023-04-02
From: SamÃÂÃÂ¢ÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂs Gap, NatureÃÂÃÂ¢ÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂs Inn Hostel

To: No Business Knob Shelter
Miles today: 18.3

Hiking Day 23 Ending Elevation 3173 feetWe had a miserable night. Neither of us could sleep, sticky from the days sweat and worried about the power coming on, which it finally did at 1:46 a.m. Unable to sleep, I got up at 5:30 a.m. to get our clothes washed and dried before our shuttle ride. Tuffbabie had finished her wash in the night, obviously worried about the same thing. At 6:30, we gave up on sleep and got showered, which helped drive the cobwebs away¢¦had some coffee and wandered over to the lodge where Amy arrived bearing a bribe (she felt bad about the power outage) in the form of sausage, egg and cheese biscuit sandwiches and potato rounds from Bojangles¢¦this immediately made me think sadly of our last dinner with Zen, the Gooder Grove Hostel owner who died suddenly a couple of weeks ago. Breakfast was good and filling and persuaded me to hold my tongue with Amy. I had spent the night thinking about how to politely let her know that she should have told us about the power outage before she took us in.That settled, we had another lovely hiking day today. It started very cold, but as I¢ve said before, blue skies change everything and we walked happily along up and down the sides of mountains, seeing pretty much the same scenery we¢ve seen for the past 3 plus weeks. Today, the sky was so clear that we had the best view yet of the distant mountain ridges forming a continuous line of navy blue against the lighter spring sky. Felix provided a new service today, he was so happy, he literally dragged me up a couple of the aforementioned mountains. It was difficult to contain his enthusiasm.I walk and I sometimes wonder what I¢m thinking about, but mostly I don¢t think I¢m thinking¢¦I¢m just walking, listening to the leaves rustle either in the wind or beneath my feet, the birds are singing more now and the woodpeckers peck, and the ambient sound of the forest that sounds like a whisper to my ears.We had more icefall from the trees today¢¦at first I thought it was pollen then I realized that wasn¢t possible. We went high (5156ft at the Big Bald¢¦.such imaginative names!) and it was so cold up there that the trees held on to the moisture until the sun warming it up caused it fall on us in a little snowstorm. There was also a lot of black slippery mud. We¢ve also had this for days; it¢s treacherous and caused us more than a few near misses in the fall department!We arrived at the shelter at 5:30, alone. We decided to camp, hoping that the predicted rain doesn¢t come before we¢re up and moving in the morning. Erwin tomorrow.One more thing, there were signs all over warning us to store our food away from the bears, but there were no cables at the shelter nor any useful trees for hanging food. Fortunately, we had one more option¢¦¢the dog method¢. Please, no caustic comments. Bears don¢t like dogs and we really had no options¢¦Felix slept next to the food bag in our tent and we had no problems. It¢s possible his presence helped the other hikers who also had no options!Some people we met (or met again)Tonight at the shelter:Mike and Jessica section hikers from AtlantaJack (of all trades) from Penn StateTwo Sticks, a teacher and editorFairy TrailsTrail Bob and his daughter, BrightsideProfessor SproutsMoon, on the trailTuffbabie, Pennsylvania I have trouble remembering names, if they appear here it¢s usually because we¢ve talked more than once.