Date: 2007-05-13
From: Little Laurel Shelter

To: Stealth campsite - near Rector Laurel Rd.
Miles today: 16.3

Huck and I decided to sleep late today after the "long forced march" yesterday and because our schedule for today called for only 13.7 miles. It was nice to just take it easy and enjoy a long cup of coffee around the shelter. I slept in my tent last night and had a restful night's sleep.I was determined today to just take my time hiking and focus on enjoying each step. The last part of yesteday's hike was not fun at all, and I want to avoid that in the future. So to get in a good frame of mind to start hiking I decided to listen to Leo Kottke on my MP3 player as I started out. Now I know as Kathy reads this, she is probably rolling her eyes (sort of an inside joke), but if Scott H. or Peg F. are reading they can relate to my choice of tunes. Leo Kottke plays 12 string acoustic guitar and this was the perfect music to enjoy a morning hike in the North Carolina Appalachian Mountains. It was a very enjoyable hike indeed.The day was sunny and in the low 60's. At about mile 3 I climbed to a rocky ridge, which posed a nice challenge. I don't like walking over loose rocks on the trail, but enjoy stepping from one rock to another when the rocks are larger and firmly embedded in the ground. When I got to the top of the ridge, there were great views from the east and west. A few days back, when I encountered these views, all I could see were mountains. Now as I look to the west I can see a change in the land. I can now see a lot of rolling farmland and small communities dotting the Tennessee landscape. As we hike north we are leaving some of the predominant mountainous areas behind, and will not see these kind of mountains again until we reach New Hampshire.I was enjoying the view for a few minutes and Huck showed up and then another thru hiker (Brother T). We all sat down and ate lunch. As we finished and started to leave a fourth thru hiker named Moose joined us. I was in the rear and the others were out of sight as they descended the rocky trail where it turned left. All of a sudden I heard a shout and then someone said, "are you all right". The first thing I thought was someone got hurt. when I caught up, I saw Huck sitting on a rock, visibly shaken, with Moose and Brother T standing beind him. Huck had been in the lead and was about to step up a rock when he heard a loud and startling rattle. As he looked to the left he caught sight of a very large rattle snake slithering away about 2 feet from him. He was so startled he stumbled back off the rock he was on and scraped his arm and leg.So now we have 4 hikers standing around trying to locate this snake. No one was taking the lead to move forward, especially Huck. So I decided to volunteer. Even though it was a bit scary since we needed to move through a narrow rock passage, I figured that snake was long gone and wanted to be as far away from us as we wanted to be away from him. So I proceeded forward carefully, eyes open, banging my hiking sticks on each rock to create a lot of vibration. Eventually we all made it off the ridge safely and had a few laughs about it later.The hike in the afternoon was real nice. the trail meandered through some meadows and followed an old dirt country rode for about 2 miles. These breaks from the typical trail going up and down through the woods, is very welcome, since it provides something new and interesting. One very interesting sight we came upon, in a shady open area of the woods, were two small tombstones marking the graves of the Shelton brothers. Apparently the Shelton brothers were two North Carolina boys who had joined up with the Union Army during the Civil War. They were making their way home to be with family to celebrate Christmas when they were ambushed and killed by Confederate troops. They were buried at the spot where the ambush occured. Huck and I took some pictures and spent some time there talking about the Civil War and how tragic that war was, as brother fought against brother. We both commented on how peaceful this site was and how it would be nice to camp here.However since the afternoon hike was an easy one, we decided to keep going and put in some more miles eventally passing our original destination. We ended up camping at an unofficial campsite in a section of woods very close to another very old cemetery with a set of headstones dated in the 1800's and a couple of old and collapsed log cabin structures. We thought the people buried here could have been the residents of this old homestead.Hoping we don't have any ghostly encounters tonight!