Date: 2013-04-03
From: Fontana Village

To: Fontana Village
Miles today: 0.0

Day 22: So I have to tell you that last night was not a restful night in the hotel. I have been sleeping so good in our tent and in the hostels but not last night. I had a problem with the oversize pillows and the heavy bed quilt so finally around 2am, I got up and got in my sleeping bag and ditched their pillow and replaced it with sleeping on my rolled up clothes. Yes, finally, a good sleep for the rest of the night.So, today we are spending a whole day with Jim and Ann and we are so excited to see family. Alex and I started our day at the restaurant that is located in the lodge while Ann and Jim just watched. They brought us tons of surprises like chips, soda, candy bars, fruit, etc. One of our big events for the day was to drive into Robbinsville, NC to resupply and to find a good restaurant. We got a tip on a restaurant called Carolina's Kitchen. There was a salad bar (AYCE) and some really good homemade vegetable soup. Afterwards, we all ordered desert. Jim and Ann ordered Holy Cow Cake and Alex ordered deep fried oreos with ice cream. They were all really good, however, shortly, after Alex ate her desert, she quickly went to the restroom and tossed her cookies (literally). No problem, as she said that she felt good before and after. So now on to Ingles grocery store to resupply. It was a beautiful sunny day so on the way back to the lodge, we took another road that went up to one of the Appalachian Trail (AT) crossings that we had done a couple of days ago. We took this picture that we posted with this entry. It was funny as we were all having problems standing near this sign and one of us kept falling. Anyway, we finally got a picture.Another big event today was to see our friends come in from the trail; Aquaman, One-Two, Annie, Teddy, Candu and Y-Not. First came in Aquaman and then the others. It was great to see them again. On a sadder note, Candu has been having problems with one of her knees and this last trek really took a toll. We are so sad to say that Candu and Y-Not will be off the trail to mend and we are so hoping that we can join up with them again sometime in the Shendoahs.So now it is dinner time and we all met in the lodge's restaurant. Early today, we met Johnny Stand Up. He either is or use to be a professor at a university in Kentucky with his field specialty being the Smokies. We made our plan to hike the Smokies in six days going 12-14 miles a day. We asked him to take a look at it and he provided some excellent suggestions, insight and education. One thing we learned that almost everyone at the table had Ice-Trekkers or YakTrax which are metal spikes that are attached to the bottom of your boots when you are hiking over ice. Evidently, we didn't get the memo. In all my research, the only reference I saw regarding ice spikes was from one book; "Barefoot Sisters - Southbound" and they were hitting the Smokies in the winter. I didn't think that we needed them. So we started to see what we could do to get them after dinner i.e. Amazon, Outfitters, etc. More on that later. All in all, the dinner was great conversations. Now our new time in the Smokies will be eight days averaging 8-12 miles. So it is suppose to rain, sleet and snow all day Thursday, so we are planning to start the Great Smokies on Friday. The Smokies are very remote and do not have any access or bailout roads. The elevation is between 5000 - 6500 ft. It is considered, along with the 100 Mile Wilderness in Maine, very difficult.I was debating to even mention this next part but I thought that maybe in some small way, for those who are reading this, we all can help. In this lodge there is no cell phone service and wi-fi only in the lodge lobby. So at night, there are a lot of people sitting around the fire in all the various couches and chairs. In short, there was a family here that somehow heard that their 13 year old son had just lost his life. We believe, his father and his family were vacationing here while his son was vacationing with another family when he got hit by a car. It was horrible seeing this family hear about this terrible tragedy. We all felt so helpless and horrified. So if you all could say a special prayer, maybe we can some way comfort this family.Salsa