Date: 2003-04-19
From: Davenport Gap Shelter

To: Standing Bear Farm
Miles today: 3.3
Weather: clear sky

What a beautiful morning. The shelter sits in a hollow, a creek burbles twenty yards away, tall trees now partially in leaf rise up on three sides above us. The front of the shelter looks out on the fourth side down the hill. The sun is out and we are bathed in dappled sunlight. We must pack. It's going to be a beautiful day. Later same day:-So today we said goodbye to the Smokies and it seems proper therefore that we should have our finest day in two weeks. Most of last night's shelter people made an early start, including "Wrong Way" who wasn't very well last night. Their destination, as was ours, was Mountain Momma's Country Store, a mile and a half east of the AT at Davenport Gap. Cheeseburgers Fever has struck.Three days ago on our ride up to Newfound Gap, our driver puzzled over the obsession that hikers seem to have over Mountain Momma's and their cheeseburgers. Their hostel facilities in his view were poor compared with the new facilities being offered by Curtis and Maria Owen at Standing Bear Farm only a little further on. But cheeseburger talk has been building over the last two days, and almost every entry in the shelter registers by earlier hikers includes some kind of cheeseburger reference. So they were off, despite my protests that civilised man should not consume alcohol or cheeseburgers before midday. When Verity and I arrived about 10.15, we found our friends thwarted. It was the breakfast menu till 10.30. Verity and I decided to have Second Breakfast, but within half an hour, the others were demolishing the meal of their dreams.The day became very warm, reaching the mid-80s in the afternoon, and it turned into a low mileage day in which we all just chilled out. I was able to lay out the tent and ground sheets and get them fully dried out. Verity and I finally had our cheeseburgers about 2.00 (they were excellent) and an hour later we were making our way back to the AT.We enjoyed two and a half miles of excellent, mostly downhill, walking with "Dimple Rock" and "Wrong Way", (the K.C. girls), "Two Speeds" and Justin. Much of it was alongside a large creek cascading down to the Pigeon River below, and the sunlight flickering through the trees just made it perfect.We would separate at the Waterville Road and, crossing a creek to reach it, Verity took a bad fall. She slipped on a rock, landed heavily on rocks with her left hip, and with the weight of her pack pulling her down, her face was momentarily submerged. She was shaken for a bit at the time, but is fine now. Standing Bear Farm is excellent for hikers - bunkhouse, covered area for cooking (stoves provided) and eating, a campfire to sit round, laundry room, and a food storage cabin to reprovision with some basic hiker staples. Also Internet access and phone if you want. About seven people are here, including "Ez-does-it", "Steve" and "Sniper", all new to me. "Sniper" is a tall, long-legged young man (so I don't think we'll see him again!) from Fayetteville in north-west Arkansas. He knows Mountain Home on the edge of the Ozarks where some very fine people live (my relatives). Anyway, round the campfire after dark, he created a mellow mood with some fine guitar playing. "Steve" is a gregarious, "live-wire" of a young man who has hiked the AT before and comes from Allentown, Pa. He talked about the depression there when the steel industry collapsed - the last Bethlehem Steel plant was demolished last year - but the place is reviving now. He vigorously defends the Pennsylvania leg of the AT which has a reputation for being particularly stony and rocky. The hiking community describes it as "The place where boots go to die". "Steve" argues that it's the previous 200 miles that kills boots, and that there is much to see in his state.