Date: 2016-08-02
From: Vandeventer shelter

To: TN91
Miles today: 11.9
Weather: few clouds

When we went to bed last night we thought that today we would have an easy 6.8 miles to Iron Mountain shelter...how wrong we were.We slept in until 8am and said goodbye to Greg as we were getting up we took our time with breakfast and broke camp around 9am thinking we'd get to the next shelter certainly before 1pm hmm! Well omg! it took us an hour to go 8 tenths of a mile, there were trees down all over the trail, some we could walk around though we had to be careful since one side of the trail was next to a very steep drop off and sometimes you just had to take your pack off and either climb over or under since it wasn't just one tree but 3 or 4 down and all jumbled together needless to say it was very slow going and bloody hard work..yep! Still living the dream ha! Ha! We caught up with Greg during all this tree climbing and all sat and had lunch exhausted at a campsite about 2.5 miles from the shelter. Greg and I had gone to get some water and as I climbed back up from getting water standing there meowing at me was a jet black cat (see gallery pics) it was feral but couldn't be too feral since it came around us as soon as we pulled out our lunch, I was trying to remember if a black cat crossing your path was good luck or bad luck but considering the rest of the day we had I'd say it's bad luck! We had gone about 0.5 miles after lunch and it began to sprinkle with rain, the skies didn't look too dark so I just kept going but then out of the blue it just hammerred down. Well, by the time I got my pack cover on I was soaked to the skin, so wet I didn't see any point in putting on my waterproof gear.The trail turned into a gushing stream almost immediately and by the time we got the 2 miles to the shelter my boots were oozing water out of my shoe laces but Murphy's law just 3 or 4 paces before the shelter and of course the bloody rain stopped. We wrung out our socks and hung them up then Richard and I went to look for a blue blazed trail with a rope hanging over a steep cliff...I know sounds very ominous but while we were at the Boots Off Hostel a lady called Vicki arrived, she owns the Iron Mountain B+B and she told Richard how to get down to her place from the trail- walk past the shelter to a blue blazed trail on the right then find a hanging rope and absail down, easy right? Oh so wrong!As I said before we were drenched to the bone and while we did wring out our socks they were still soggy when we put them back on and my boots were so wet I poured out the water but in a few minutes I would be in a lovely warm spa bath if I wasn't killed trying to absail down a slippery rope, oh! And did I tell you we had a very full pack with 6 days of food and all our stuff was soaked, sleeping bags and all(so much for our waterproof pack covers) we had planned to Hike straight to Damascus, before we got soaked but now the B+B we think a warm dry bed is the way to go... 5 miles later and no blue trail or rope...we get to a road TN91...of course we have no phone signal (that bloody cats fault). Eventuallya guy driving a tractorcomes down a side road and Richardasks to borrow his phone but his battery is dead.. of course it is! Not long after a guy in a truck comes by whose phone does work and Richard gets through to the B+B but just our luck Vicki cannot pick us up cos she's going to a play but she did say she'd call around and try to find someone who could come and get us. Well we had no phone signal, it started to sprinkle again and we had waited 50 minutes - I was ready to get back on the trail and set the tent up before the storm hit- literally minutes before we were ready to give up on the ride an SUV with a lady (Val) and a little boy (Wyatt) pulled up and asked if we were Richard and Tina...Yaya! Vicki had found someone who would drive us to the most awesome B+B we have ever stayed at. We were still wet so as soon as we got there (around 8pm) I took a wonderful spa bath that was in our room then did laundry and chatted to William and Mary, a couple from Houston Texas who were also staying there on their way to Chicago to visit family. We eventually got to that warm, dry, very comfortable bed at around 10:30pm.