Date: 2015-04-04
From: Fontana Village

To: Mollies Ridge Shelter
Miles today: 12.3
Weather: broken clouds

We had a relaxing morning in Fontana. We took showers, wrote post cards, and had coffee and muesli before getting on the trail at 10:30. The climb to the Fontana Hilton was steep and seemed a lot harder than the advertised mile it was supposed to be. We did have good weather and no fog (although it couldn¢t seem to decide if it should be hot or cold and we along with everyone else were continuously putting sweaters on and off) and great views from the shelter down at the lake. The AT goes right across the Fontana Dam before entering the Smoky Mountain National Park. On the way across, we saw Lightning (another through-hiker) again. At the entrance of the national park, there many signs about bears. The national park has around 600-800 bears and we really hope we will see one of them! In the first few seconds of being in the forest, a snake slithered over Relentless¢ shoe. Hopefully, wildlife will continue to cross our path. It was much easier hiking without Baby because she tends to stop sporadically and get extremely worried when she cannot see both of us. And for the first time, Relentless was able to walk in front, since Baby won¢t walk if she is not in between us. This first day in the Smokies consisted mainly of uphill stretches. Wistful had a hard time today because she kept getting a cramp in her calf. We also had to deal with the unfaltering presents of the black flies whose only missions on earth seems to be to fly into hikers¢ faces the minute they take a break. Even so, we finally made it to Shuckstack fire tower. We climbed up the somewhat rickety and dangerous stairs to the top and with every step the wind became stronger and colder and our knees hurt more and more. But the view was definitely worth all of the effort. We could see all the way to the Fontana Dam and plenty of the surrounding Smoky Mountains. There were also the remnants of a small cottage or shelter at the base of the tower. We ate lunch; the peanut butter and tortillas we had bought at Fontana. The peanut butter was good but the tortillas were moderately to extremely stale and disgusting. We ate them anyway so we wouldn¢t since they are pretty heavy to carry around.Our strenuous day ended in a long climb up to the shelter. The shelter was large but full and there were plenty of good camping spots nearby. Here we saw Neon again finally (she hikes extremely fast so this was a nice surprise) and Spudnik, Fare Enough, and Tumbles and Scout along with others from Fontana. We also learned that the guy we had been hiking with recently was Easy Go and we tented next to him. In the shelter/camping area there was an odd sign that we had never seen before. It had an arrow pointing to the right with the words ¢Toilet Area¢. Tumbles went to investigate. To our dismay, the sign meant that there was no privy. Alternatively, there was a steep-ish area with a handful of trees and clumps of toilet paper lying abandoned on the ground. We and everyone else put off going to the ¢privy¢ as long as possible!Other than the toilet area, our first night in the Smokies was quite enjoyable. We had a wonderful dinner of BBQ Spaghetti and bean soup mixed together. Tonight it¢s supposed to freeze so we were once again curled up with our filters and cold water bottles and Relentless had to sleep without the warmth of Baby in the bottom of her sleeping bag.