Date: 2004-10-17
From: Newfound Gap, Smokies

To: Pecks Corner
Miles today: 10.4
Weather: few clouds

Today is Sunday October 17th. We have a plan to complete the A/T in the Smokies. We left Belleville Friday October 15th at 12:25 pm. We drove to Crossville, Tennessee, Exit 317 and got a hotel at a Scottish Inn. Woke up the next morning and went to Enterprise in Knoxville, Tennessee , when they opened. They upgraded us from an economy, which they didn't have, to a Ford Focus which is considered intermediate. Drove to Newport, Tennessee, and even though it was morning, we started checking out hotels in Newport for Saturday night. They were all real high priced, so went down to Cosby. A couple hotels were full, so dropped the Focus off in the Cosby campground, and drove into Gatlinburg. Checked out a few hotels that were either full or too expensive. We had lunch at the Texas roadhouse. Headed up and over Newfound Gap and into Cherokee, North Carolina. Went out NC 441? where we had stayed one time before, and stopped at the Belair Court Hotel, where we got the last room for $55. We repacked our backpacks and went out for supper. We went to BigBoy because Ponderosa had a big line. It was ok. We got up this morning at 6 am. Got on the road at 6:30. Drove to Newfound Gap where there were quite a few people. I was surprised! They were there waiting for the sun to come up and to take pictures! We had breakfast, took clothes off, put hiking clothes on, put boots on. Finally said we just got to go, even though it was absolutely freezing. On the trail at 8:10am. At 9:10 we are at Sweat Heifer trail. Took a break in the sun and a potty break, for a few minutes. We hiked on to Ice Water Springs shelter trail and met a few people coming down from the shelter. Then when we got to the shelter there was a whole group of people just all laying around or getting ready to go. That was about 9:45am. We didn¢t stay very long. One guy we met on the way told us about these ice curls, that he hadn¢t seen since he was a boy in Alabama. It¢s like water that is pushed out of the ground, and as it comes out, it freezes and it curls a little bit. We continue on and at 10:33 we get to Charlie¢s Bunion turn off. We walked down the side trail a little bit to where there was sun shining on the trail. We took another little break, looking at Mt. LeConte and enjoying the changing, beautiful colors in the trees, off in the distance. We stayed about 15 minutes. As we went on, there were so many views to the west and north. Every few minutes were fantastic views. We saw Porter¢s Creek valley and continued to see Mt. LeConte for a long time. We looked back at Charlie¢s Bunion. It is incredible how the pile of rocks just goes straight down. Finally we looked at our map and thought we were at Porter¢s Gap, and then another climb up and we started to get a great view of Bradley¢s Valley. Then you could see where the trail was going to go. It was going to cross over and to another ridge. We figured that was where the shelter was. It still took us over an hour to get there. It had you crossing over another high ridge, with another nice lookout. We think that was Bradley¢s view. We finally came to our cutoff for the Pecks Corner shelter at 3:15pm. Got to the shelter at 3:30pm.We were the first ones there, and didn¢t know if we would have it to ourselves or not. We changed clothes, and wasn¢t one minute later, after we had got our clothes back on, a guy comes in. And then they started to slowly come in. We had 7 total with 5 middle age retired men. No young people. We talked a little bit. Everybody was doing there own thing. Terry got in his sleeping bag at 6 o¢clock. I had gotten in mine to warm up then came back out. I got back in about 7:30pm. Everybody was in by 8 o¢clock. Had a little snoring going on, but it wasn¢t bad. I didn¢t sleep very well at first. I ended up getting up 3 times. A whole bunch got up at 10:00pm. Then I got up around 2:30am, then at 5:30am.