Date: 2018-05-12
From: Tri-Corner Knob Shelter

To: Snowbird Mountain
Miles today: 22.8
Weather: moderate rain

The Philly crew wanted to get to one of the mail drops early, so they all woke up at five. When there are a few people getting up at the same time in the shelter, it is tough for them to be quiet so basically everyone wakes up. Also, I haven¢t close the nozzle of my sleeping pad all the way so woke up a few times on the hard floor. They all got out at six but I was little slower so more like 6:30. But of course I had to catch up to them so booked it for the first few miles. We all ended up doing 10 miles before 10 AM, which was a fun accomplishment. Granted, the terrain was easy and it was a beautiful sunrise.Rob split off to do the Mt Cammerer trail, but I wasn¢t about to add another mile to an already long day. So the Philly crew and I went on. Oh. I forgot Rob now has a trail name - ¢Double O¢. It¢s short for 007 because he was very suspicious about his job (he works on submarines for the Navy) so we are convinced he is a spy.I continued on with Fedex and Professor, Four step went ahead to pick up her package. We stopped for a while on a cool rock overlook, and ended up getting down to Davenport Gap out of the Smokies by noon, which meant 14.8 miles in 5.5 hours! After a big lunch, they all walked or waited to hitch to a country store, but I wanted to keep going so continued on alone. The first spring I passed, I spent a while getting water and letting my feet soak it was delicious. The trail then crossed some roads and the interstate, which was actually a bit complicated to follow. I forgot my guide had a map. Not used to blazes on guardrails!It was basically a climb up the road to Standing Bear Farm. I wasn't sure if I was going to stay there, but at least needed a resupply. As I was walking in, I heard someone say, "Oh great, another F*ing thru hiker". So great reception. One of the workers showed me the store, which was based on honor system where you wrote down what you bought and gave them the total. Almost all of the food was expired, and seemed to be a random assortment grabbed from the dumpster of a grocery store. Overall, the place was not "cute" or "quirky", but gross. Double O got there when I did and was like yeah, no. I even wanted to filter the water I got from the tap! Reminded me a lot of the scene from Fontana - thru hikers that start taking some zeros, get drunk and never leave. I guess they were "work for stay" without the work part. Luckily I only needed food for a couple days so made do and got out as quickly as possible.Unfortunately the next listed campsite, a few miles up, wasn't really great. We ended up walking all the way up the next mountain. On the way we passed an old man that mentioned something about a bear. When we got to a clearing, we met a thru hiker named Peach who was sitting. Apparently she had just seen a mama bear with a cub not 20 feet away. She made noise, blew whistle, etc. but the bear just stared. Eventually Peach just kind of walked slowly around it and it looked at her but never moved. She was pretty shaken up though. She said her friend was at the top checking campsites and she would be ok. We pressed on and at the top there was an FAA communications tower. Beautiful spot, but not really anywhere to camp. We put our packs down and walked 0.1 miles where we saw Peach's hiking partner (Wild Man) at a nice spot. It wasn't huge, but we would make it work and had a beautiful sunset/rise. The rest of their crew, Nacho and Golden Girl joined an hour later, as did the German from the shelter before (I think his name is Stefon, but I called him Ninja Turtle because everything he owned was green, slow and steady pace, and kind of snuck up on you). A good group and was able to get everything done before dark after my longest mileage day yet!