Date: 2016-06-20
To: An offer of mashed potatoes at the end of the day
Miles today: 0.0

Vandeventer Shelter to Double Springs ShelterThough we have another long day ahead, hiking 14.4 miles, the trail looks very forgiving. The AT profile on the AWOL guide page for today¢s section shows gentle ups and downs with no more than 500 feet of elevation change. After an uneventful morning of hiking, we arrive at Iron Mountain Shelter. Serenity is already there, sitting at the shelter¢s picnic table with three trail maintainers who are finishing their lunch break. We join them, and notice the bunch of purple-flowered spiderwort decorating the table, clippings from the maintainers¢ trail trimming. We thank the maintainers for their work as they leave to continue down the trail ahead of us. They work fast, and the sound of the gas powered weed trimmers two of them are using soon fades away. After lunch, X and Suuz hike for quite a while before catching up to the first maintainer, who¢s using a manual hedge clipper to trim back wicked greenbriar vines and rhododendrons which are encroaching on the trail. Still later we pass the woman with a gas trimmer. She stops the trimmer to let us pass and X again thanks her for clearing the trail edge. The maintainer thinks X looks familiar and asks if she¢s hiked here before. When X mentions thru hiking in 2012, the woman exclaims, ¢You¢re one of the Troverts! I followed your Trail Journal in 2012!¢A mile or so later, as we near the Nick Grindstaff Monument, we pass a line of young hikers who stand to the side of the trail and clap as we pass. Suuz thanks them for their encouragement. One of their leaders is from the area and tells us the story of Nick Grindstaff, whose monument is engraved with the words ¢He lived alone, suffered alone and died alone.¢ Though ¢Uncle Nick¢ was a hermit who lived a solitary life here with a cow and a dog, he was beloved by townspeople he mingled with on twice yearly trips to town for supplies. When he didn¢t show up as expected during the summer of 1922, a neighbor who went to investigate found Nick¢s dog guarding his master¢s body.After crossing TN 91, we come to a tricky gate which admits us to a series of cow pastures. The afternoon sun beats down on us as we hike uphill, following the AT through the pastures and across several stiles. We¢re thankful when the trail returns to shaded woods for the rest of the way to Double Springs Shelter.We reach the shelter in late afternoon. X scouts out tent sites while Suuz checks out the shelter¢s spring. A church group of teenage backpackers is camping at the sites farthest uphill so we pick one closer to the shelter. We¢re happy to see young people outdoors but hope the exuberant young campers will quiet down when it gets dark. Serenity arrives after us and sets up her tent downhill, close to the spring. She overhears us debating morning wakeup times--X thinks getting up at 5 gives us extra time for unexpected delays on the trail; Suuz feels it¢s inconsiderate of nearby campers to make noise so early and she moves so slowly in the dark that there¢s not much time saved by rising before dawn. Serenity calls out, ¢I can¢t wait to see the movie ¢Grumpy Old Women¢ when they make it.¢ The squabble about waking up early is one of the few disagreements between X and Suuz. Before the discussion goes much further, dinner is ready. We share seats on a long knee-high log, a downed mid-size tree propped between two stumps. Suuz gets up to retrieve her spoon and settles back gingerly on the flimsy log. Not gingerly enough--the log cracks and we crash down. We land still sitting upright with dinners in hand, laughing to the point of tears and forgetting we were quarreling.As we finish eating, three campers from the church group come downhill with a giant tub of mashed potatoes. We¢re so full we have to turn down their offer of leftovers. When we hear the sound of the tub being scraped in the woods later, we hope they¢ve eaten the potatoes or are burying the remains very deep to avoid attracting hungry bears.Before we turn in, we meet Stogie, a teacher from Atlanta who stopped to spend the night in the shelter. We return to our tent where Suuz falls asleep quickly, but X reports hearing loud voices from the group camped uphill until 10PM. Then all is quiet around Double Springs Shelter for the rest of the night. If bears came in search of the mashed potatoes, we didn¢t hear them.Dr. Suuz and X