#6 Gatlinburg to Standing Bear

4/8: We left the greatest hostel in the history of hostels in the morning. As we were waiting for the shuttle to get back to the trail, we saw Sunshine and Otter! It was nice to chat and catch up with our friends. We got to Newfound Gap and it was super foggy and icky out. A sign said we had 1,970 miles to Katahdin and off we went on the trail. It started raining around noon and between the occasional downpour and the mist, it was a very wet day. We got to mountain ridges where the trees cleared, and all we could see was white fog. At one point though, the fog cleared up and we saw some gorgeous views of the Smokies. The mist was rising up like smoke in between the peaks like it was being sucked up by the clouds.

I felt so lucky and thrilled to see the phenomenon the mountains were named after. We’d heard so many horror stories about how terrible the weather in the Smokies was, so we didn’t expect to see much, but this stretch has blown away all of our expectations so far. We hiked about 10.5 miles to the shelter, and there was space! Everything in our packs stayed dry, so we have a warm and dry night to look forward to before more rain tomorrow.

4/9: Hawk woke up super early this morning when another hiker was getting packed up and the light from his headlamp went right into her face. Good morning AT! As we packed up we were looking forward to hiking our farthest day yet. It was drizzling as we hiked and the trail was still a river from the rain last night. Less than a mile into the day Kori slipped and fell forward. She didn’t hurt herself other than some bruises, but we decided to hike about 6 miles instead to the next shelter to rest up. We started a fire with wet wood to dry out our shoes, and boy that was a struggle. Kori got it started and Hawk babied it for a while, which was good because when we get bored, we eat all of our food. The sun came out later that afternoon so we dried out some more gear. Hawk was out looking for firewood and saw a hawk flapping hard from a low tree. The hawk and Hawk were instantly friends and Hawk named the hawk Emily. Anyway, we ate dinner, bear bagged our food, dried off our feet, and hopped into our sleeping quilts for the night.

4/10: It started off as a beautiful day. The views were fantastic and the trail was relatively flat. We hiked in a state of bliss for about 7 miles to Cosby Knob Shelter to eat some lunch and decide whether or not we were going to hike another 7 to the next shelter. Two nights before, we stayed at a shelter with 4 sick hikers. They were pretty sure that it was food poisoning, so we thought we were ok. We were mistaken. At around 1, Kori started feeling sick and didn’t feel better until 12 hours later when she fell asleep with nothing left in her system. It was a tough night and Hawk wasn’t feeling all that great either, but we survived.

4/11: The next morning we woke up groggy and a little light headed. Then we saw a bear about 20 yards from our tent sniffing around. A bunch of other hikers came down the hill to see it and talk to it to scare it off. Suite Life (a fellow hiker from Michigan) yelled out “HEEEYYYYYY BEAR!” and that was pretty funny.

You can kind of see his legs as he’s leaving the campsite

The bear mosied off into the woods and we packed up our tent real quick in case it came back. We decided that 1. The bear’s name is Bernard, and 2. We had to stay at camp for another day. Both of us didn’t feel well enough to hike and Kori was still dehydrated from last night. We set up our stuff in the shelter and napped, played cards, and drank lots of liquids. Hikers trickled into the shelter, and by 6:45, after a small dinner, we saw Hagrid trooping into camp! It felt good to be reunited with our friend! We chatted about Gatlinburg and caught up a bit, and then we headed to bed for an early night and a lot of rest.

4/12: We hit the trail at a slow crawl in the morning. We just had to make it 10 miles of easy terrain to Standing Bear Hostel, which was outside of the Smokies. The trail was mostly downhill and we let gravity do most of the work for us. We made it to Davenport Gap around 12:15, which meant that even though we weren’t feeling 100%, we still were going a little over 2mph on average! And we were out of the Smokies! We sat at the gap and Hawk gave directions to some tourists who were trying to get to Gatlinburg. After a small lunch, we hiked by a pretty river with flowers growing all around it and we saw a lizard and a salamander.

Spring is here!

The woods were teeming with life in the lower elevation and it felt like spring was finally here! We then hiked across roads and under an interstate, and had one last climb to Standing Bear Hostel where we got a bunk, veggie burgers, and enough pop tarts to get us until Hot Springs.