Date: 2012-05-25
From: Brown Fork Gap Shelter

To: Day 10
Miles today: 13.0

Man oh man. Thru-hikers are a rowdy bunch. So the hiking part of the day breezed by almost without notice. Getting up early made for a short and easy 11 miles to get to the Fontana 20 AT crossing, save for the climb down off of the ridge to get to the dam reservoir and the park. Evan and I hiked at roughly the same pace and got to visitor center at the reservoir within 10 minutes of each other, and early enough to have a whole day to kill running errands. From there we were able to use their outdoor phone to order a $3 shuttle straight to Fontana Village, an overpriced touristy little resort that's 2 miles off-trail. Fontana Village does have the distinction of having the last post office before the Smokies, however, and is an important re-supplying/re-organizing point for almost all thru-hikers. The Village even bills itself as "The Gateway to the Smokies."    You see, life out here changes a lot in the Smokies. It's the first national park that NoBo's hit and also happens to be one of the most popular national parks in the country. So that means that is has its own set of rules and regulations that everyone has to follow, even us thru-hikers. Yuck. The Smokies also represent some of the most unique terrain on the whole trail supposedly. The mountains are truly enormous and the average elevation of the trail itself skyrockets for a while. In fact, the highest point on the whole AT is in the Smokies. This also means that the Smokies, while located in the South, tend to be as cold as the Northeast all year long. One of the many rules in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park that you're not allowed camp anywhere and, instead, have to fight for room in the shelters each night. It's only when the shelters fill-up that you're allowed to camp in the designated tent-pads at each shelter. Worse yet, the park caters to tourists and day-hikers so us thru-hikers are supposed to give them first priority when it comes to rack space. So I hatched an ingenious plan so ensure that I, at least, was guaranteed room in a shelter each night. I was already going to the post office to mail my Snuggie home and pick up Ethel, my down sleeping bag. I was bumming about all the extra bulk and weight Ethel was going to represent when it hit me: If I have to stay in a shelter every night, why the hell should I be carrying my own shelter with me? So I got a bigger box and mailed home my hammock and my tarp along with the Snuggie. Now I literally have no other option but to force my way into every shelter I want, no matter how full it is. This is my house.   I went back to the general store and Evan and I took a while packing up our mail-drops and trading food with other hikers. This was my first real mail-drop and my Mom really came through for me. Pretty much got exactly what I ordered plus some surprise candy and even a little note with some handwritten quotes about long-distance-hiking. You rock mom. Me and Evan finished packing up, ate some food, bought some beer. Then we caught a shuttle to the Dam itself where they have another visitor center with free showers! Samantha just so happened to be hanging out outside getting ready to hike out. She said that I just missed Daniel actually. He was a day ahead of her because she took a day off here in Fontana while he hiked on. He hiked out into the Smokies yesterday, spent a night by himself at the first shelter, decided that he's had enough, and turned around this morning. I was dumbfounded; out of everyone I've met out here so far, I thought that Daniel was the most likely to make it. I told Sam I'd catch up ASAP and bid her farewell. By then it was my turn in the shower, if you can even call it that. It was damp, dingy, scummy, single public shower that spit out a trickle of lukewarm water. All-around a pretty gross experience. I'm done thinking about it...   After we got "clean" Evan and I decided to save the $3 and just road-walk the 1/3 mile back to the Fonatan Dam Shelter. Huge mistake. Our fully-loaded town-packs and all of the beer that we were carrying and the fact that we were hiking south really made for an unpleasant walk. So much so that we had to stop and have a safety meeting on the way; unpleasantries = dissolved. When we got to the shelter, the Fontana Hilton as it's called, we ran in to Daniel who is here for the night because his ride home won't get here till tomorrow. He seemed to be in good spirits. He just wants time to go do other stuff this summer before school starts back up. I think he realized that he wasn't going to be able to get as far as he wants to in the time he has left out here. Figures his summer would be better spent with a fishing pole in his hands. There's no shame in that. There were also some weekend-warriors shuffling in-and-out of the shelter so the three of us decided to pop on our swimsuits and walk back to the reservoir to go for a swim and drink our beers in private. The reservoir was great. We found a little public/private pontoon-patio at the end of a dock and posted up. After swimming in the beautiful teal blue water for about half an hour we just sat there on the dock and chatted and drank beer and we watched the sun set over the mountains. Just three dudes living the good life.   We got back to the Fontana Hilton well into dusk and the shelter was literally overrun by hikers. Thru-hikers, section-hikers, weekend-warriors, you name it. I was immediately reminded that this is the start of Memorial Day Weekend at one of the most popular hiking destinations on the East Coat. Gulp. Us thru-hikers realized that we needed more beer. Lots more. Luckily, a hiker named G Foot just finished his section-hike and had a buddy with a car there to pick him up. So me. G Foot, and his pal took up collections and rode to the closest general store to buy 96 canned beers. I'll be honest I kind of blacked-out the rest of the night. I remember it being a hiker-party of epic proportions though. We had a huge fire. Sang songs. G Foot told me about a place I should go to get a dog: HuskyRanch.com. I smoked a ton of weed with Evan and another hiker named Jude. Jude carries a little sketchbook with him that he uses to record measurements about plant morphology. He's generating field data that will eventually go into his dissertation about the parallels between natural plant structures and sacred geometry. We immediately hit it off and spend the night drunkenly discussing Biology in the context of New Age philosophical movements. I think...