Date: 2017-05-03
From: Overmountain Shelter

To: Mountaineer Shelter
Miles today: 18.0

I got up to water the grass at 3am and after clearing the sleep from my eyes woke up to the AMAZING stars. Since I already had my fly rolled back I just opened the tent door and rolled it back since there were no bugs. My tent is supported by treking polls so lI retracted one to partially collapse the tent and allow me an unobstructed view of the sky... a sort of hybrid cowboy camping. The milky way was plainly visible and I could even see nebulae/dust clouds blocking the star light, lightyears away from Earth. I watched several satellites trace through sky (8 or so) and even 10 or so shooting stars while I drifted off back to sleep.It got cold overnight, but I was cozy in my bag. I watched the sky lighten and the stars disappear with Venus being the last star to go. I was waiting for Classy to wake up before I got up but I dozed off and she got up and grabbed the bear bags before I woke up. The pack is light since there's no food and it was a beautiful sunny day, so the hike up the hill was nice. We got a view looking back on barn from hill and more bald mountains up ahead. As we crested the first bald I thought I lost my buff, which was very sad since it's a versatile piece of gear. I turned back for a couple hundred feet to look for it, but it turns out I was actually wearing it in pirate mode as sun protection. Crisis avoided.It was interesting to see the parade of hikers working their way up the balds. While there probably weren't more hikers in the trail than normal, we're usually in wooded areas and so can't see each other and how close everyone is to eachother.We descended off the bald and hit our next milestone, the NC/TN border! We had been walking the border for the past couple hundred miles and had finally reached our last steps in NC. 2 down, 12 to go! For the next 70mi we'd be in TN and then onto VA. We cruised the last couple miles down to the road and found TRAIL MAGIC. Dave was offering sodas and ride to town for any hikers. I ended up in back of the truck and we set a record for the most hikers in his truck with 12 hikers. Dave dropped us at Bobs Dairybar where we I got a burger, salad, onion rings, and strawberry shake. After eating we quickly resupplied and got a ride back to trail, with me and several hikers again in the back of Dave's truck.We hit the trail again and cruised over relatively easy terrain until we found Jones Falls. To paint a picture... We were sitting on a rocky outcrop to right of the lower falls. The water at top came from a stream and split into multiple streams, some being catapulted into the air by the shape of the rock and some flowing down the face of the rock, which glistening in the sun. Those streams then drop down ~30ft into a pool hidden from view from my vantage point. The water then overflowed that pool onto slabs of rock where the water pooled and flowed laterally in cracks before it coallecing and flowed out of sight below us.We enjoyed the falls for a couple minutes, which was a nice rest for my knees after all the downhill today with our heavy packs. After hitting the trail again we followed a river along it's grassy banks before hitting another milestone: 400 miles! It was only a little ways longer to Mountaineer shelter, our home for the night. This was a nice shelter... the broom had a handle, the shelter shovel was long handled, there were 3 levels including a loft, the cooking area had benches and were the right height for using the table. We setup and cooked dinner as the group of guys from a religious retreat group made a fire, which we joined them in enjoying for a while before heading to bed.