Date: 2015-04-06
From: Mt. Collins Shelter

To: Icewater Spring Shelter
Miles today: 7.5
Weather: overcast clouds

Oh man, what a night! Lol! Shelters suck. One of the section hikers, a woman, snores like I've never heard anyone snore before. It was so loud it went right through the ear plugs like it was nothing. I've never heard anyone snore so loud in my life. At about 4 AM the Hoff started freaking out. He was cursing in German for a bit. He muttered something about snoring like a sailor man. At one point he had leaned over the bunk. Half of him was still on the bunk and he was shining his light under there to see who it was. Then we kept moving around nosily trying to wake the snorer up. It was hilarious. Sunny and him chatted for a bit, I chimed in here and there. Eventually the snoring quieted down a bit where we could doze off for a bit. But still, we didn't get much sleep. We left camp about 8ish. Hiked .5 miles back to the trail. We had a pretty good pace and made it to Newfound Gap at about 1030ish. Sunny's daughter Rachel was picking us up and driving us around Gatlinburg for our errands. It was so awesome! She lives an hour and a half a away. It was great that she was able to come don that for us. Plus sunny was really excited to see her. When we got to the gap some people were setting up trail magic. Homemade bisquits and sausage gravy!!! OMG!! It was amazing!! We stuffed our face with a few other hikers...Chimney, fireman and one other I can't remember his name. Glorious!After that Rachelp drove us to the NOC outfitters where they left thru hikers shower for free!! Awesome! I had to pick up a few things, we went through the hiker box and then we were on our way. We stopped at the post office, family dollar, the laundromat and the grocery store. Busy, busy little bees. We bought entirely too much candy. I've never eaten candy like this in my life. We went to a pizza place for lunch. The slices were enormous. And I ended up sending my second slice home with Rachel. I just couldn't eat it. Eventually we made our way back to the trail. It was about 4pm. We had 3 miles to go to the shelter. All uphill of course. It was rainy and cold. We were both sitting in the car and we just didn't want to do it anymore. I was like just take me home, I'm done. Sunny felt the same. But we put our packs on and did it anyways. Sunny left some trail magic for the hikers behind us. After a few minutes on the trail our spirits picked right up! We had a fantastic time, loved being out there. We talked, we sang, we were a little rediculous. And we didn't care that it was raining. We made it to camp and of course it was full. So we found a place to set up our tents. It was raining so we did one at a time. Goes faster with 2 people and the inside gets less wet. We went back to the shelter to hang out and dry out a bit. They had a fire going. Moment and Neon were there!! We chatted for a bit, so nice! And warmed up by the fire. It started raining harder but we made out way back to our tents to relax and get in our sleeping bags. Seems like it's going to be raining for a few days. We decided to try and get up early tomorrow so we can get a spot in the shelter. Packing up a wet tent sucks. Luckily we seem to have a bit of service at this shelter. Barely.See you later