I had looked up hostels in Franklin, North Carolina, since it was close to the shelter I was leaving. I found one called All in the Family that sounded like a good deal, although it was $135 for the room whether there was one person in it or three. I texted them at the first mountain where I had cell service and got a response that yes, a room was available, but they didn’t mix strangers, so I would have to take the room for myself.
A couple of nice nature finds on the way – Hairy Oyster Mushrooms, a small funnel-shaped mushroom I’d never seen before, and some kind of swallowtail butterfly, probably a black swallowtail.
Butterflies are very hard to photograph – you basically shoot a dozen or more pics and hope that the butterfly is in one of them, then you crop real tight. So the resolution on this one is pretty low, but it was a beautiful butterfly.
I got down to Winding Stair Gap around 1 p.m., and Slim Jim was there waiting for me. He was very friendly and told me all about Franklin and what a nice town it was, and about his own thru-hike with his partner, One More. They didn’t manage to complete their hike. They made it about 700 miles, well into Virginia, when they had to quit because One More had a bad ankle from the start and thought she could push tgrough but it just kept getting worse.
We got to their house around 1:30 p.m., and they showed me the room. It was actually magnificent. There was a double bed with a single bunk above it, and a cast iron bathtub sitting right in the room. At first I worried that that was where I would have to shower , but no, there was also a separate room with a toilet and shower. The toilet even had a bidet. I spent a little while trying to figure out the correct order of doing all the things I needed to do: eat at a restaurant, shop for food, and see if I could find a battery somewhere.
At some point Slim Jim texted me and said there were fresh cookies in the kitchen and I should come have some. I went in and found that One More had baked a massive number of chocolate chip cookies. I ate a few and chatted with them for a little while.
A bit later, while I was back in my room, One More came in carrying a giant Tupperware container full of cookies along with a box of Ziploc bags. She told me I needed to take all of them with me; otherwise Slim Jim would eat them all. I wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. There was certainly no way I was going to take all of them, but I did say I might take a few.
I then spent quite a lot of time looking at maps and trying to plan a route fir my errands. I also spent some time calculating when I might reach a point on the trail near Asheville where I could meet up with Dino and Lisa. I wrote a fairly lengthy message explaining all the various options.
Unfortunately, a little later I got a response from Dino saying they were in Spain and that from there they were going to New Orleans, so they wouldn’t be in North Carolina while I was passing through.
Eventually Slim Jim said he could take me downtown. There was a restaurant and a supply store there, and when I was finished he could pick me up and take me to Ingles to do grocery shopping. So we went downtown and he gave me a little tour. It’s an interesting small downtown — basically a single main street with lots of shops, somewhat touristy.
He parked behind the outdoor store Outdoor 76, where we looked at batteries, but unfortunately none of the ones they had would work for me. Then he headed off and I went across the street to a Mexican restaurant where I ordered vegetarian fajitas.
Unfortunately my appetite just wasn’t there. It’s kind of strange: I feel really hungry and at the same time a little queasy, which makes it hard to eat. Also, these weren’t the greatest fajitas. I ate outside on the patio, which was at least nice.
After eating, I called Slim Jim, and he picked me up and drove me to Ingles. I spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out what to get. I had a complete shopping list for ten days’ worth of food. Note to self: ten days is too many. It means I’m carrying a 45-pound pack for the first two or three days.
After about half an hour of going back and forth trying to find everything I needed, and making at least one concession to my veganism by buying a block of extra-old cheddar cheese, I headed to the checkout and paid $91 for ten days of food.
We got back to the house and I spent about an hour trying to organize everything. In the end I wound up ditching two of the prepared meals I had made in Toronto because they just weren’t working very well for me. Instead I packed something like six or seven Knorr sides and one or two other meals I had found. I also ditched one of the two packs of wraps I had bought. I had simply bought too much food and couldn’t even fit it all in my pack.
I had eaten a late lunch around three, so there wasn’t really an opportunity to go out for dinner, and I wasn’t all that hungry anyway. I wound up just snacking on bananas. I think I ate three bananas between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Then I checked the weather forecast and realized that the following Monday the low in Franklin would be –10°C, and the low on Tuesday would be –7°C. Of course that probably means it will be even colder up in the mountains. I started to panic a little and began trying to figure out where I might be on those days and whether I could find a place to stay overnight.
I went to talk to Slim Jim and One More, and dor the area I woukd be in by Monday they recommended the Hiker Inn. I also mentioned that I had some reservations about going through the Smoky Mountains in March if it was going to be that cold in Franklin. I figured it would probably be even colder in the Smokies. They confirmed that the Smokies can get very cold in March, and even in April they’ve had snowstorms.
I went back to my room and tried calling the Hiker Inn, but they were full. However, another place that had been recommended when the woman at the Hiker Inn told me they were full did have availability for both days. They could even pick me up at Fontana Dam, which is nice because it means I could hike farther than where the inn actually is and then get picked up there, so I would at least still get some extra miles in.
Still, I found all of this quite stressful — the thought that after only five more days I would have to stay in another inn, the fact that I have too much food, and I still have to figure out how to get through the Smokies when it’s extremely cold.
Slim Jim did say that another option would be to skip the Smokies for now, go straight to whatever comes after them, and then come back and hike the Smokies later when it’s warmer and there’s less risk from the cold. But that was yet another potential source of worry.
So, I lay in bed unable to sleep for many hours. I had gone to bed around nine, and finally, probably around eleven, I took a backache pill. About half an hour later I fell asleep, but I think I woke up again a couple of hours later to pee or something and couldn’t get back to sleep.
So I feel very underslept. Luckily hiking is not a highly intellectual activity. But it really was another rough night — two rough nights in a row.