Date: 2012-04-27
From: Moreland Gap

To: Hampton, TN
Miles today: 15.0

27 April. To Hwy 321 to Hampton. 15 miles. 4/27/12  "Today we got up early(6:00) and started hiking at 6:30.  We hiked 6 miles by 9:00. We got to a Hostel(Kincora) and ate breakfast then  put together our packs for our slack packing(when you leave your gear someplace and only cary food & water and some other stuff.) Then we went into town and checked Email/posted our journal entrees. Next we went up north and headed south back to Kincora."     ¢Sunshine:-)Yep, we know all the thru-hiking tricks!  We woke up at 6:00am at Moreland Gap Shelter and left by 6:30.  We knocked out the 6 miles to Dennis Rd by 9:00am.  We secured bunks at Kincora Hostel, cooked breakfast and hitched into Hampton, TN.    Tomorrow, my beautiful and brilliant wife is graduating with her masters degree in teaching with endorsements in "early elementary" and "English a as a second language learners".  We will be going into Hampton again tomorrow to watch her graduation streaming live.  So we stopped at McDonalds to verify that we had sufficient WI-FI there.  After eating our fill and taking 6 cheeseburgers to go, we picked up our supply package from the Post Office since tomorrow is Saturday.  We stuffed our new food into the nifty kids book bags that we borrowed from Bob and hitched to the AT 9 miles north of the hostel.  Brilliant!!  This was the first dry and warm day in what, 5 days?  We slacked that nine miles south in 4 hours with ease.  It was up 4.5 miles and down 4.5 miles. We stopped at the top to eat our cheeseburgers for lunch.  We have learned that it is just plain silly to leave a town with out cheeseburgers or Sub sandwiches for the next meal(s).  Laurel Falls was amazing!  It reminded us of a bigger and more rapid Ramona Falls in Oregon.    Following this beautiful stream for the last 3 miles was spectacular.  The purple Rodedendroms were in full bloom next to the copper colored stream.  We arrived back to the hostel at 5:00pm, ate the rest of our burgers, showered, did laundry, and organized our packs for tomorrow.  Hitch shared brownies he made with ice-cream that Blue Bunny made(ha,ha).  Sunshine enjoyed meeting Ricky the Raccoon while she ate the cat off the porch.  Ricky ate the cat food, not Sunshine.  When we walked outside, she just greedily pulled the bowl closer to herself and continued to eat as if to say "Hey, this is mine, go get your own cat food".  We all had a great time sharing trail stories and now we get to sleep in till whenever tomorrow!  We don't leave here till 11:00 am.  Oh, trail drama update! Remember the grumpy hiker with the rain gear?  We ran into her last night again and she was again grumpy with me (it was raining, in her defense)  However, we passed her today while we walked south and she was all smiles!  She was like a different person. We figured that Beacon must have some special gifting with the ladies to bring out their very best.  She obviously is a strong hiker since we see her about once a week.  Since she must hike about our pace or at least distances, it is now our goal to turn her into a friend instead of a foe. We rarely see the same hiker twice out here.