Date: 2009-06-09
From: Amicalola Falls

To: Maine
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

Well.....Here I am in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, about 214 miles into this journey.We're staying at the Grand Prix Motel tonight. This wasn't planned, since we wanted to save money by only staying in hostels/hotels like once every 3 weeks or so. Our next is the Standing Bear in Davenport. Full Kitchen so I can bake banana bread!I've developed a shin splint in my left leg, a huge blister is enveloping my toes on my right foot and I have a hole in my left foot. Well, the hole was from a tree root. I was climbing out of the lake at the Fontana Hilton, a very classy trail shelter (running water! showers! a king snake to keep out the mice!) It was beautiful. The water was 72 degrees and soooo refreshing, it made for a late start to our day. Anyway, I was climbing out onto the slippery bank, and our new friend Joe was holding out his hand to help me but, you know me and in my terrible pride I said "no thankyou". well I slipped and stabbed my foot on a tree root. Boohoo. It hurts to walk all day with a hole in your foot. Lesson learned. Maybe.Well I haven't updated this thing since Hiawassee huh? That's a lot of stuff to remember. Let's see.... I'll just stick to a few highlights.We met some awesome people. Bit and Byte, Robert and Andrea, have been hiking with us since before the NOC I think. They are sweet, and from Texas, currently. Although they are really quite worldly. We also met Mike, i think on top of Mt Albert. I donned him Winelip. I hope he keeps it.In the NOC we went whitewater rafting. Tim and I camped on the river/ train tracks to save money. Thankyou, trains, for not operating at night.Our next stop was Franklin, where we really just did errands, showered and then hit the trail again.I think it was sometime after Franklin where I saw my first bear. We had just watched the sunset on a stone tower. Wayah bald I think. We night hiked to the Wayah Bald Shelter. Anyways, I was alone when I saw the bear, and I went back to get Tim. We yelled at it. It wasn't scared. Damn.So Fontana Dam was next I suppose. This is where we caught up with the Eh Team, Matt and Emily, whose entries we had been reading in the shelter registries. They roll with Baloo and Sparky (Brian and Megan), another swell couple who had to put their dogs in a kennel so they could pass thru the Smokies, where Dogs are sadly not allowed.Yesterday, Tim and I played Red Light Green Light with a Buck as we were leaving the shelter. Then again with three deer at another shelter. We got within about 20 feet. We did a 13 mile day to Mt Collins Shelter. We climbed the highest mountain on the whole trail, Clingman's Dome. We lost our crew to town. Eric and the rest of them hitched into town from the dome. We made our way to the gap today to hitch. We are currently ahead of all of them by 9 miles, haha. I don't blame them though, they got rained on. It missed us perfectly. So we made it into Gatlinburg today and went directly to Shonies for the AYCE Buffet, and what luck! Megan and Brian were there. Soon to be followed by everyone else. Hmm...what else... My cousin Erin! Happy Birthday! and Happy Baby...she's in labor.So it is now 6/10 and later today Tim and I are hiking a mere 3 miles to the next shelter. We just said goodbye to our new friends, they went ahead to Davenport. We're going to have to catch up with them, so they better go slow!I also really want a puppy. Badly. They scare bears and are great fun. Dammit.Oo and we ran into some rangers one day who were cooking prime venison on a fire in front of a closed shelter trying to attract a problem bear. They told us to punch a bear in the face if it's sniffing our tent, or us while we're sleeping. I've been sleeping with a rock in the tent so that I can punch them with that instead. I think their teeth would hurt my fist.