Date: 2008-03-27
From: roan high knob shelter

To: apple house shelter
Miles today: 14.7

Wonderful day today; perhaps one of the best days of my life. Definitely the best day on the trail so far, narrowly beating out the day I summited Clingman's Dome.One thing from yesterday I forgot. I saw my first four deer. I had been seeing prints, but surprisingly no deer this entire trip. Weird.Didn't sleep much last night due to the floor being slanted, but it was really windy out so at least I wasn't in that. I got up early again and hit the trail before 8.Did some ice skating descending Roan High Knob, but it cleared up quickly, and the trail on this side was graded much better. Found a trash can at the gap after the mountain and also a pit toilet. How hikers long for things everyone else takes for granted. This is for a parking area where cars can go straight to the top of the mountain, snap a picture and take off. Somehow I don't think they appreciate it quite as much as I do, but to each their own.After the gap there were two bald balds. They were above 5800 feet, and had perfect 360 degree views. The wind was howling cooling it down a bit, but I still stayed up there for a while. The area I was in today is the Roan Highlands. Very high territory with many incredible views of the surrounding mountains.Sadly, I departed the balds and climbed part way up another and had a partial view but the trail veered off.Descended some and got to Overmountain Shelter for lunch. It is an old barn that had been converted into a shelter, so it was a bit more interesting than normal shelters. It also had a commanding view of a huge valley it sat at the head of. Pretty neat.On the way in, I believe I officially Yogi'd my first food. I met 3 former thru-hikers and we were chatting, then the conversation went something like this not I'm going to start using brackets for parentheses from now on because mine don't work for some reason:Her: How are you doing on food? {read: do you want some food}Me: Oh, I'm always hungry. {read: yes, please}Here: here you go. {hands me power bar and regrets she has already opened her pop}Sweet. I don't want to Yogi often, but she was fishing for it.Anyways, I had lunch and took a short break, then headed up Little Hump mountain. It was getting hot out so I was decked out: sunblock {still got sunburned}, sunglasses and bandanna which was soon soaked in sweat. Even in the heat, the climb wasn't too bad, I just consumed more water. No big deal.I met the father that I had met yesterday and agreed with him that this section of the trail was definitely the best I've seen so far. You would be hard pressed to argue against that.As I was approaching the top {like within 10 feet horizontal of the summit, I heard a racket sorta like a couple prop planes. Well some army helicopters suddenly appeared over the mountain about 100 feet above me. I'm not kidding. Didn't even really have time to wave. Whipped out my camera and got a couple pics. No idea what type they were, but they looked a little older.That was pretty sweet, even though it shattered the peacefulness of the area. I wasn't disappointed.As the choppers left, I noticed a hawk circling below me a little lower in the valley. I love that.This peak was a little below 5500 feet, but the view was surreal. I could see the last 4 mountains I summited pretty much lined up {got them all in one picture}. I could also see where I was gong next, plus miles and miles in every direction. Grabbed a 360 shot with my camera and went on to the next hill which was also a bald, but higher.The next bald was {gasp} Big Hump Mountain. It was 5585 feet tall and had a much more commanding view of the surrounding area. I can't even begin to describe the view and my thoughts and appreciation of it, so I won't even try. Its just all up there in my head.The three thru-hikers were also at the top of Big Hump, and they immediately invited me to take a seat and share their snacks. SCORE. This wasn't just snacks, it was homemade humus, parmesan cheese, bread from a baker, chocolate covered almonds and blueberries, and there was more but I don't want to think about it more... Needless to say it would have been delicious to a normal person and I was a hungry hiker. I ate a lot and we chatted for about an hour. Nice people. They got up to leave eventually and gave me their leftovers {SCORE 2}.After all that, I was pretty much on cloud nine, but I knew I should head down to the shelter. It was a 2500 foot descent over 5 miles. Joy. It went alright and I found some good water coming directly from a spring. Took a full load since I don't have treatment.With my topo map, I found the approximate location of the TN/NC boarder. This was significant because after I crossed it I would be DONE with North Carolina. Two states down, 12 to go. Took a picture of myself looking much more like a mountain man than the last one and kept going.I eventually got to the shelter and made dinner. It was a fantastic dinner. I notices some ramps {sorta like a leek crossed with garlic} growing next to the shelter and I chopped some up and put that in with my noodles, olive oil, seasoning, and garlic. Absolutely fantastic, and I made a bunch of it. Had some cookies for desert from the hikers. And after all that I'm still a little hungry. Oh well, that's the life of a hiker.So, that was my day, hard to describe, but maybe I was able to paint a small picture for you non-hikers. I find it really hard to describe a lot of the stuff and goings on out here so I just take a shot and see how it goes.Wow, this was a long entry, over 1000 words. Took me like 10 minutes, but would have taken me hours of dragging my feet to write something of the same length I college...