Date: 2006-05-09
From: Newfound Gap 

To: The last 3 Days of the Smokeys 
Miles today: 0.0

By BuoyLast night we stayed at a motel in Cherokee. We really appreciated the bathroom and the dry soft bed. Now we were mentally stable enough to hit the second part of the smokies.My hike started with an almost 4000 foot climb out of Davenport. That actually sounds way more arduous than it really was. I think part of it is that my body is getting used to the up and down. Another reason is the fact that this part of the AT is accessible to horses. Many hikers hate these sections because of all the horse droppings and the mud. I like it because horse trails are graded. I climbed this mountain without a problem and arrived at the shelter at 8 pm. The shelter was full and I set up tent right next to it. I was right beneath the bear cable with all the food bags on it. This is a prime spot to watch the bears at night. This park has about 600 bears and I had a good chance to meet one of them that night. Lefty would have liked that prospect but not so me. It started to rain at around midnight but I had prepped the tent very well. I had folded my Tyvek groundsheet to resample a bath tub, was on a even spot and had tighten all lines. This was the first real test for our single wall tarp tent and everything worked well. Twice that night I woke up to the sound of an animal sniffing around my tent. I yelled out to it and hoped it was not a big creature. The second time around I could tell it was not a small animal because it tripped over a tent line. In the morning it was still downpouring. I packed my dirty and wet tent in the driving rain made breakfast and started my next day of hiking. My foot had swollen overnight and hurt pretty bad. All day long it rained on me and I was very happy about my synthetic shirts and rain coat. Its not that it kept me dry though. After a few hours everything was pretty wet. The good thing is that my clothe keep me warm even when they are wet and that is all that counts. The Appalachian trail became the Appalachian river. When I arrived at the shelter after 14 miles I was greeted with blank stares by its occupants. This shelter was full of cold tired day hikers in a bad mood who did not want companionship of another smelly through hiker. These people had made their reservations 6 month ago but shelters hold at least 4 spots open for through hikers. But I did not really take a no for an answer and put my pad down anyways. For the reader this whole day probably does not sound like much fun but I actually was in a better mood than you would expect. The whole time the forest was saturated in fog which was both beautiful and mystical looking. A place could not look spookier. It was quite an experience to spent a whole day in something that looked like the set of a Dracula movie. And I loved being at camp looking at this view while drinking my hot chocolate and talking to the fellow hikers in the shelter. Yes they warmed up to me after a while and we had a great time exchanging stories. My third day again was very foggy but it stayed dry. I had a wonderfull last 10 miles out to Newfound gap were a hungry Lefty and Righty were awaiting me in our Van.We did the Smokies and I think we are all pretty proud of it. Wait till you hear Lefties and Righties stories of this section.