Listener and I had agreed that he would get uo at 6 and I at 5:50 since he sleeps in the shelter and I needed an extra 10 minutes to pack up my tent. Accordingly I changed one of my standard alarms from 6:50 to 5:50, without noticing that that particular alarm was set only Monday through Friday. So imagine my panic when I woke and thought to double check the time and discovered that it was 6:34. On the positive side that meant an extra 44 minutes of sleep for me, which I really needed because I seem to have developed sleep apnea and keep waking up out of breath. On the negative it meant I really had to scramble to make up for list time.
Listener was very understanding and patient and said he would meet me at a spring a mile north (the water supply at the shelter was rather murky). I gulped down my granola and my cold cup of instant coffee (think of it as trail cold brew), packed up and left about 10 minutes after him.
We were aiming for the last shelter in the Smokies, knowing that we might get 25mm of rain overnight. We worried about how crowded that shelter would be (last night’s was packed). And I worried about sleeping in a shelter with a crowd of others, and about sleeping in my tent in a rainstorm.
Fairly early in the day we decided it might make sense to push on and stay at a hostel. We had heard some pretty shady stuff about Standing Bear Farm, which is the big hostel right after the Smokies. Listener found another place, Hikers Rest, and got a reservation for their bunky for tonight. It meant a fairly long day, around 18 miles, but since we hit the trail around 7:10 it seemed doable.
We dropped about 3300 feet from shelter to highway, so it was interesting (to me at least) to see how much the vegetation changed, from almost boreal to southern Ontario to Carolinas. I saw at least three kinds of trilliums (the ones we have at home, Little Sweet Betsy, and Yellow Wakerobin, an ironic name considering Robin didn’t wake up, someone should have yellowed at him). Also two new species of violet, sweet white and birdsfoot, an orchid (showy orchis [stet]), Dutchman’s breeches, squirrel corn, foam flower, and maidenhaur fern. Lots of fun pointing the Seek app at every new plant I don’t know.
We took a 1.2 detour to visit a stone firetower with excellent views im all directions. Some pics below.
We arrived at the road atound 5:30 and our hostess. Julie (trailname Stripper) was waiting for us. She thru hiked once and a half, most recently in 2023. She first drove us to Walmart so we could resupply and buy our supper and breakfast, then to her place. It’s an unassuming house in tge countryside, probably a quarter acre mown grass lot, with two picnic tables, a barbecue, an outdoor shower, sink and portapotty, and a bunky that has two queens and two upper level twins. Listener (aka Ed – we decided that when it’s just the two of us we don’t have to use trailnames) bought a sandwich for dinner, as well as grapes, blueberries, clementines, and ingredients for egg mcmuffins for breakfast. I also bought grapes (a misunderstanding), bananas, frozen veggie burgers, whole wheat buns, tomatoes, and an antisnoring mouth insert that will hopefully stop my sleep apnea.
It’s now past 10 pm which is very late for a hiker but since the rain is supposed to last through 9 am we aren’t in any rush to crash.
