Date: 2020-06-12
From: Rock Gap / Franklin

To: Wayah Bald
Miles today: 13.9

Woke up in town on a beautiful day for hiking, but didn't reach the trail until 2. Had a big omelette and biscuits and gravy at Kountry Kitchen, next to a rough-looking, abandoned place called the Roadhouse that looked like you'd find Patrick Swayze inside.Sunshine had a package due at the post office - his summer sleeping bag. But it was still on the truck. Rather than risk greater delays by bouncing it ahead he decided to wait a few hours, so I joined him to save Zen having to make two twenty-mile round trip shuttles. Several more hours in town - a trial I must endure!So what does one do with a couple of hours to kill in Franklin, North Carolina? Why, go look at kilts, of course! Franklin is the home of the only museum in the world outside Scotland on Scottish Tartans, the plaid patterns each clan wore. These are largely a modern invention. Two centuries ago only 100 were catalogued. Now there are many thousands as families, organizations, towns like Franklin, and even businesses have created their own. My own family has a Cunningham on my mother's mother's side. We looked up the pattern. Red with black stripes. Could have been a lumberjack shirt! My grandmother herself was a McGovern, who apparently come from Ulster, now part of the UK. Although Irish, they too had a tartan. A sample was dug up from a farm in the 50s. Faded to browns, weavers recreated what it must have looked like new. The museum also featured Scottish history from prehistoric to union with England, Royal Highlander regimental uniforms and medals and more. So much of western North Carolina seems to have been founded and named for Scots.Our hostel host and shuttle driver Zen took us back to the trail around 2 after a successful package interception. Zen is deep into Eastern mysticism, and former editor of the Macon County News. He has a good heart, loves dogs, and wishes he could get back to the trail himself. Like most hostel owners, his is a labor of love. It is hard to find good help to be able to step away.The hiking was strenuous at times but enjoyable. Cool dry breezes and clear blue skies outside the green tunnel made for a perfect day. I notice more rocks and roots than in Georgia. Not predominant, just more frequent, especially near water sources and on sidehill trail. Late in the day I began tripping in roots and could tell I needed to stop soon.Minutes after starting I was captivated by a spring with a waterfall and, after snapping a picture, dropped my phone in the drink. The home screen shone through the rushing water. Quickly retrieving it, I turned it off and let it dry out for a few hours in my pocket. Fortunately it booted up later in the evening. All my maps among much else are on it. Probably a warning not to rely on it so much. It was interesting hiking all afternoon without knowing exactly where I was or what time it was. Liberating, a little.Had fantastic 360 degree views from Siler Bald and Wayah Bald. Wayah we reached not long before sunset and watched the orange ridges in the west, the multi-hued blues in the east, and the pink tints to the clouds. The Smokies were visible to the north, only 27 miles by crow but 80 by trail. A large family from Orlando came in from the parking lot to see the sunset. They had lots of questions for the thruhikers.It was only a mile to the shelter but we opted to camp up here. Forecast was clear but cold. Low of 55 in Franklin 3000 feet below meant 45 at our 5300 ft elevation. I cowboy camped (no tent) on the leeward side of the stone tower that was formerly a firetower to minimize the chill breeze. The stars gradually came out in a perfectly clear night sky, twinkling near the edges. So perfectly clear. And so many! One airplane passed high above. Then a tiny dot moved deliberately westward. Not a shooting star. Not a plane. It could only have been a satellite, or perhaps the space station. I've never seen such a thing before. After dozing the cold breeze on my face woke me up. The sky was now ablaze with the Milky Way, flowing northwest to southeast. Stars that had been pinpricks were now like bonfires, and thousands more around them. Another nap and now the quarter moon was rising in the east with clouds moving in. I felt like a time traveler watching the universe change before my eyes.I'll leave you with this quote from William Bartram, an explorer and botanist whose route through this region in the mid 1770s is now the Bartram Trail, on the view from Wayah Bald:"I beheld with rapture and astonishment a sublimely awful scene of power and magnificence, a world of mountains piled upon mountains."