I awoke to mid 20 temperatures. Needless to say I didn’t want to get out of my warm sleeping bag again. One thing I can say for sure about the Smokies is it was cold. I would imagine it’s not this cold year round, but with the higher elevations, I’m sure it stays pretty cold most of the time. I finally got up, ate, packed up, and hit the trail. I noticed the higher I climbed the more icy the trail got.
I reconnected with Fargo. He told me he met some thru hikers that rented a cabin and invited him to stay with them. He slept on the floor but it was free and warm so he didn’t mind. I hiked with him for a bit until we split up after stopping for a snack and water.
I passed 3 British guys hiking southbound. I noticed 2 of them had big wooden oars in thier packs. I asked them what they were for. They told me they were headed to the NOC to get in the river on a boat and head down south. At some point they’d get off and hike the Trail of Tears. Why would they come to the US to do this I wondered? I didn’t ask but thought it was pretty cool. I also wondered where thier boat was. Maybe they are renting one somewhere? Maybe it’s one you air inflate and they had it in their pack? Anywho…
I met a young lady from Marietta, GA. Her name was Kung Fu. She got her name from kicking someone in a shelter her first week on the trail who was snoring too loud while they were trying to sleep. She planned on hiking the entire AT but had to get off the trail in May for her sisters wedding. Her sister made it clear she was NOT allowed to cut her hair before her wedding. Funny:)
King Fu and I hiked together and chatted until we arrived at the next shelter. My goal was to hike a little further that night. But it was already 430pm and I passed a family earlier in the day that stayed at a shelter we passed and said there were quite a few people that stayed there as well last night. That whole crowd was headed to the next shelter ahead of where I was currently standing that evening. Which meant if I pushed on to the next shelter now I’d get there pretty late and it would most likely be full. Not good. Hemingway, Casa, Norris and Nevi were all going to be there. Maybe I’d catch them tomorrow I thought.
There was a nice group at this shelter. Cushy was here. I met quite a few other really great people. Trigger, Spinner, a Dad with his 3 sons from Pennsylvania, Two Tone, Diesel CoCo. The Dad and 3 sons got a nice fire going. We all sat around the fire cooking and eating our dinners and talking. It was really nice. This was the first time this happened and something I had been looking forward to.
CoCo, a guy from the UK, kept us laughing. He got his trail name last year when he came to the US to check out the AT. He brought pounds of chocolate with him. Once he realized how much the extra weight impacted his pack weight and hiking in general he started giving away chocolate bars to everyone he could. He was then dubbed CoCo. We were discussing our plans for the day he said, “I guess we’ll have to suck it and see”. ? We all laughed and said “what?”. He explained it was something they say in the UK all of the time. It derived from when they were kids and thier parents would give them a lollipop. The kids would ask “what flavor is it?” The parents would reply, “suck it and see.” It’s a saying that means just do it and figure it out. So of course we all used it as we talked for the rest of our conversation…laughing.
The sun set and we all climbed into the shelter and into our sleeping bags and fell asleep. It as the first time I slept in a shelter too.
I was pretty impressed with the shelters in the Smokies. They had large tarps covering the open ends of them. This helped keep the cold, wind, rain, snow, etc, out. They also had fireplaces. This was nice for heating the place up on these colder nights.
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