from Oct 3, 2013

Trying to dry out after my 17.6 mile romp today. Unapologetically it is the conditions do the trail that determined how far you can go on any particular day. Because I got to this shelter I'll have left white crane back a half day he'll be spending the night at standing bear hostel. I was sorely tempted to stay there too. It would be a very co place to come back to. It's on a road but I don't have a clue which one but it's about 200 yards off the aT. So there's the white farmhouse sitting in the middle of the woods on a creek. Surrounded by about a dozen smaller buildings made out of home sawn lumber or maybe recycled lumber. The first thing you come to when you turn in the driveway is the bearded shirtless dude holing a bud light who wants to show you around. He's living in one of the little cabins over the creek, the other building over there is the privey. Right hare is the. Bunkhouse. There's bunks for maybe 16 people and right in the middle is barrel stove ready. To provide heat. There's a porch on either end. On one end there's a derelict old corn busker a few other rusty farm implements and a garden of impatiens all planted in hiking shoes slowly turning to dirt or at least moss. On the other end there's some home made sitting benches and a respectable collection of contemporary and not so contemporary books and magazines . There's a couple cabins scattered about for any hardy couples that may find their way here. The one I saw from the road on the way in looked like a comfy tree house with a sitting area below. The building behind the bunk house was the fully furnished kitchen dining room . Again more books and magazines, photo, and sombreros nailed to the ceiling. Oh and there seemed to be a few guitars lying about I guess just to play if the mood strikes you. Attached to this is the laundry and where you can find clean towels for the showers which are in the next building over. Back here all laundry is done by hand- your hand But there is an electric cloths dryer. Things are hard to dry otherwise. There was an Australian fellow loitering about the kitchen and just about to sit down and eat his lunch, everyone cooks their own food. Of open faced tomato and mushroom sandwich. Oh, and the last building on the tour, if you don't count the front porch of the farmhouse where everyone was sitting was the " store" it had just about anything you might want from earplugs to frozen pizza ( that you could cook back at the kitchen) popsicles to spam. I had both. I also picked up a package of ramen and took it over to the kitchen to cook for lunch. I had a soda a banana and packed up enought supplies to get me to hot springs. This would be a fun place to come back to. I think the sign said there was live music one night.
I keep meeting SOBO's they are an interesting crowd. Usually traveling by themselves or in pairs. One fellow I talked to today said the two big challenges left for him were hiking out of the Fontana dam and hiking out of the NOC. Heck I have done those! And one of them in rain! Everyone is concerned about what the shutdown smokies means for them- I suspect very little. What's reall interesting is they all seem to know who is one or two days ahead of them on the trail and who is one or two days behind them on the trail, even to the approximate hour!
To the person thrash seem encouraged to meet someone who started at springer mtn
-83.2884°, 35.6749°

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