Date: 2014-06-12
From: Campsite on trail heading up to Chestnut Ridge

To: Jenkins Shelter
Miles today: 12.9
Weather: broken clouds

Thursday, June 12.12.9 miles to Jenkins Shelter.Broke camp at 9:25.  My fault for the late start, because I slept in.  Laura had to wake me from a bad dream in the middle of the night.  I dreamt that a bear was ripping apart my backpack.  Other than the dream, the night was uneventful - no real unwelcome visitors.  We began with a long climb up Chestnut Ridge.  Half a mile after we started, the trail broke out of the woods into a clearing.  Must have been a farm at some point, perhaps tobacco.  Lots of clouds in the sky, but views from the trail beautiful.  We could see back to the Grayson Highlands where we were last week.After about 3 miles, we got to the summit and Chestnut Knob Shelter.  We had good cell reception there, so Laura made a few calls while I cleaned up the shelter some (it was filthy) and got a trash fire going in the outdoor fire pit.  It started raining about 20 minutes later - not surprising since Laura was in the shelter.  The rain has an uncanny ability to wait until Butterfly is secure in a tent, shelter, hostel, hotel, restaurant or covered structure of some type before it starts.  Not all the time - we did get rained on back on April 16th and on May 10th as we left Fontana and headed up into the Smokys, but for the most part, it doesn't rain unless Laura is inside.  I'm not sure what or who to attribute this to, but I suspect that the prayers of Laura's friends back in CA have something to do with this curious phenomena.  We waited out the 15 minute shower in the shelter - one of the nicest on the trail because it is a four sided stone structure with windows and a door - put our pack covers on and headed on.  We hiked along the ridge of Gardner Mountain for must of the afternoon.  Progress was slow because there were a lot of rocks, but we saw a big rattle snake as well as some very interesting rocks (see photos).  The rocks looked like fossilized bunches of roots, but I'd love to know how they formed and ended up on the top of this ridge. At around 3:30, large dark clouds began to form overhead and we began to hear thunder in the distance.  By four o'clock, the thunder was close enough and loud enough that I felt we were going to get dumped on, so I suggested that we set up the footprint and fly for a break. We had just arrived at a campsite near a gravel road, so there were several good sites to wait out the storm under our fly.  It started to rain as soon as we were under the fly, but the storm never really broke: it sputtered a spat for some time but was the kind of weather we could have and should have easily hiked through.  We did have a nice nap though and listened to a book on Butterfly's iPhone - Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns.  We debated whether to stay for the night or press on to the next shelter, but we needed to cover some more miles so, at 7:45 PM broke camp for a 4 mile hike.  The rain held while we hiked, but the going was still tough - rocky and slippery - so progress was slow and the last 2 miles to Jenkins Shelter was accomplished with our headlamps on.  We passed a deer along the way, I'd say about 15 feet from us, and all you could see at first were it's eyes.  We finally got to the shelter at 10 PM and everyone in it was asleep.  Turns out there were only 3 people there, but their stuff was spread out so it looked pretty full.  We decided to be courteous and not awake those in the shelter so we set up our tent behind the shelter.  It began to rain again as soon as the tent was up and Laura in it - naturally.  We cooked our chicken and risotto dinner in the tent and turned out the lights around midnight. It was a warm and very humid night, and I didn't even unpack my sleeping bag - just slept on my Thermarest pad.