Date: 2014-05-22
From: Spivey Gap

To: Erwin Tenn.
Miles today: 11.0
Weather: broken clouds

We had a bad storm last night, lots of wind and rain. The lightening seemed close but not over us. I swear there was a bear sniffing around our campsite in the middle of the night after the storm had passed. He came right up to the front of my tent and stopped.That is the second time that has happened since I started hiking. I guess the only way I could be sure would be to open up my tent and look out, but I haven't gotten that brave yet. I woke up just before 6:00 and talked to Meghan(Sunflower) in the tent beside me. She said she hadn't heard any bears, just the storm. I told her that I would take off for Erwin and get our car and come back for her. The tents would have some time to dry out and she could rest a little. I took down our food bags to grab a Cliff Bar and then threw the bags in each of our tents. Sunflower made a big deal about me telling her we had a bear in camp last night and then I threw food in her tent and was taking off. We both had a good laugh and I assured her that the bears have all gone to bed for the day. I put on my shoes, raincoat, and grabbed my water bottle and snack and took off about 6:30. I forgot to take my camera so I didn't get to take pictures of the nice waterfall, Mountain Laurel blooming, and several trees blown down across the trail. When I got to No Business Knob Shelter there were three people packing up for the day. I jokingly asked them if everyone had survived the storm last night. They said one hiker almost didn't. His name was Small Talk from Atlanta and he walked out of the shelter and wanted to show me something. He walked over to his tent and their was a nice sized limb sticking out of the corner. It had went quite a ways into the ground and tore the side of his tent. It had broken off from the top of a tree nearby and landed in the ground like a Scud Misssile. He said that it missed his head by about a foot and a half. He heard it hit the ground and thought it had missed his tent until he felt water running in. It had scared him pretty good, he said that he was done hiking for now and was going home. I got to Erwin about 10:30 and headed back in the car to pick up Sunflower. She was chilling when I got there about noon. We loaded up our stuff and some backpacks belonging to Spider, Wild Child, and Godfather, they were going to slack pack to Erwin like me. We went back to the hostel for showers and to restock my food bag for the next three days. We couldn't do laundry there before 4:00 so we found a laundry in town and Sunflower went to WalMart to pick up a couple of things for me and her husband Kurt that was on his way to go hiking. Sunflower's hike was over, we had a good time hiking for three days and going to Trail Days. When the next group of hikers Kurt(Gila Monster) and Carson(Seeds) got into town we weighed our packs at the hostel. Gila Monster's was 30 pounds, Seed's was 20 pounds, and mine was 37 pounds. We then all went out for pizza at Pizza Plus, a local chain to fuel up for our hike. Then Char(Kurt's mom) and Meghan took us to Roan Mountain State Park to drop us off for our three days of hiking. They would then return to Indiana after kicking us out at the parking lot and taking some pictures. As we climbed up in the mountains, over 6,000 feet it got really foggy. We were going to spend the night at Roan High Knob Shelter, the highest shelter on the AT. The shelter looks just like a cabin, it even has a door and upper story. I took a couple of pictures but the fog was pretty thick. We soon went to bed, the bottom level was crowded so I slept in front of the door. During the night I heard the door coming open and I thought a bear was getting ready to stick his head in there. I was holding the door shut with my hand and reached for my light. When I pointed my light at the door I could see someone's fingers so I quit pushing on the door. One of the hikers upstairs had come down to go to the bathroom and I was closing the door on him not a bear! I have got to quit imagining these night time visitors.