We have made it 162.6 miles!!! We have reached Fontana Dam, which is a major mile marker for hikers! Tomorrow we will enter the Great Smoky Mountains National Park...it should be really great! This week we covered a lot of ground. We are starting to get faster and stronger with our longest day being 17.9 miles. It did rain a lot this past week, which made things a bit uncomfortable but not too bad. This area is in a 10 year drought, so we can't complain about the rain too much. Thank you everybody for commenting!! I wish we had internet access more often so we could be in touch better, but what can you do? To answer Olivia's question about books...right now Nick and I are reading The Monkey Wrench Gang together. People do leave books at shelters, but we have not seen any so it must not happen too often. We were planning on having Tyler mail us some books or buying some.
Somebody put this bear in the middle of woods to wish us good luck. The sign says, "Boo-Boo wishs y'all good luck thru-hike." Bears do not write the best, but they are very supportive!
We made it to North Carolina!! Well I am in NC and Nick is standing in Georgia.
This is an old and twisted tree near the border that has been photographed a lot. Too bad the trail people had to put a white blaze on it.
Happy Hikers!
Bear Sanctuary!!! We still have not seen a bear, but there was a sign that warned us about a bear that would steal our packs. We thought that was pretty funny imagining this bear walk up to us and steal our packs right off our backs. In our heads we imagined he would put the pack on himself and walk off. That story might be funnier after you have walked in the woods for two weeks...ha ha.
This is an old shelter. The new ones are a bit better.
The rain has started.
We were making breakfast at this shelter to avoid the rain when Mr. Bo Jingles came out to say good morning. He is kind of cute.
A very wet day!!! After we left Mr. Jingles we hiked until 1pm, and then we decided we were too cold and wet to go on anymore. We hid out at this shelter where there ended up being 11 people...only 6 slept in the shelter though. You can see all of our stuff is hanging everywhere trying to dry. This is the first shelter we actually slept in. I was kind of sad I didn't even see a mouse in this one.
A stone tower. It is suppose to have a "fabulous view", but there is only fog today.
Trail Magic is wonderful. People that enjoy the trail, either because they have hiked it before or some other reason, come out and do little things for us hikers to make our day. A couple days before we ran into this dome 2 guys that had hiked the trail last year had cooked hamburgers and hot dogs for any thru-hikers going by. It was really great to eat a big, warm meal after hiking all day. Apple, the guy in the dome, hiked about 300 miles of the trail and found he got more out of doing stuff like this than hiking, so he bought this tent (made for the base camp at Everest), and he sits up here every March to give people hot dogs, hot chocolate, cookies, apples, and a warm place to sleep if you want. It was really cool. Nick and I are totally going to buy one of these domes to live in!
Apple and the inside of the dome.
The fog.
More fog
Me standing beside a huge rock! We had just left Nantahala Outdoor Center (NOC) where we spent the night in a hostel. We got to eat a huge pizza, take a shower, and wash our clothes. When this picture was taken I smelled very nice.
We just hiked up from that river!! What a view!!!
Morning fog.
The view of North Carolina from Cheoah Bald.
So this is another funny story...we didn't buy very much food at the NOC because it was so expensive, so we were going to try to stretch our food from there to Fontana Dam, which was only going to take us 2 days...so we knew we would not die of starvation. Well the first day Nick was already crying about being hungry. He even got so desperate that he started eating little crumbs he found on the ground. This is an M&M.
This is him eating the M&M. He is so funny. I think we are eating about 2500 to 3000 calories a day, which we really need to be at about 4000. More calories equals more food which equals more weight in our packs though. We are starting to figure out little tricks to getting more fat though from veteran hikers, such as carrying Parkay with us and putting that in everything. This is the first time in my life I can absolutley eat everything I feel like and still lose weight. When we leave this library we are going to go eat two huge hamburgers with fries...it is going to be great!!!!
A scary tree.
There it is Fontana Dam! We ended up hitchhiking from here to Robbinsville so we could buy more food and use the internet. We didn't know it since we do not have a map, but we ended up backtracking a bit by doing this since Robbinsville is south of the dam. Hopefully we get a ride back there and we do not have to rewalk it!!
Somebody put this bear in the middle of woods to wish us good luck. The sign says, "Boo-Boo wishs y'all good luck thru-hike." Bears do not write the best, but they are very supportive!
We made it to North Carolina!! Well I am in NC and Nick is standing in Georgia.
This is an old and twisted tree near the border that has been photographed a lot. Too bad the trail people had to put a white blaze on it.
Happy Hikers!
Bear Sanctuary!!! We still have not seen a bear, but there was a sign that warned us about a bear that would steal our packs. We thought that was pretty funny imagining this bear walk up to us and steal our packs right off our backs. In our heads we imagined he would put the pack on himself and walk off. That story might be funnier after you have walked in the woods for two weeks...ha ha.
This is an old shelter. The new ones are a bit better.
The rain has started.
We were making breakfast at this shelter to avoid the rain when Mr. Bo Jingles came out to say good morning. He is kind of cute.
A very wet day!!! After we left Mr. Jingles we hiked until 1pm, and then we decided we were too cold and wet to go on anymore. We hid out at this shelter where there ended up being 11 people...only 6 slept in the shelter though. You can see all of our stuff is hanging everywhere trying to dry. This is the first shelter we actually slept in. I was kind of sad I didn't even see a mouse in this one.
A stone tower. It is suppose to have a "fabulous view", but there is only fog today.
Trail Magic is wonderful. People that enjoy the trail, either because they have hiked it before or some other reason, come out and do little things for us hikers to make our day. A couple days before we ran into this dome 2 guys that had hiked the trail last year had cooked hamburgers and hot dogs for any thru-hikers going by. It was really great to eat a big, warm meal after hiking all day. Apple, the guy in the dome, hiked about 300 miles of the trail and found he got more out of doing stuff like this than hiking, so he bought this tent (made for the base camp at Everest), and he sits up here every March to give people hot dogs, hot chocolate, cookies, apples, and a warm place to sleep if you want. It was really cool. Nick and I are totally going to buy one of these domes to live in!
Apple and the inside of the dome.
The fog.
More fog
Me standing beside a huge rock! We had just left Nantahala Outdoor Center (NOC) where we spent the night in a hostel. We got to eat a huge pizza, take a shower, and wash our clothes. When this picture was taken I smelled very nice.
We just hiked up from that river!! What a view!!!
Morning fog.
The view of North Carolina from Cheoah Bald.
So this is another funny story...we didn't buy very much food at the NOC because it was so expensive, so we were going to try to stretch our food from there to Fontana Dam, which was only going to take us 2 days...so we knew we would not die of starvation. Well the first day Nick was already crying about being hungry. He even got so desperate that he started eating little crumbs he found on the ground. This is an M&M.
This is him eating the M&M. He is so funny. I think we are eating about 2500 to 3000 calories a day, which we really need to be at about 4000. More calories equals more food which equals more weight in our packs though. We are starting to figure out little tricks to getting more fat though from veteran hikers, such as carrying Parkay with us and putting that in everything. This is the first time in my life I can absolutley eat everything I feel like and still lose weight. When we leave this library we are going to go eat two huge hamburgers with fries...it is going to be great!!!!
A scary tree.
There it is Fontana Dam! We ended up hitchhiking from here to Robbinsville so we could buy more food and use the internet. We didn't know it since we do not have a map, but we ended up backtracking a bit by doing this since Robbinsville is south of the dam. Hopefully we get a ride back there and we do not have to rewalk it!!
4 comments:
Sounds like you guys are getting your share of rain, maybe you could bottle it and mail it back home. Jaylyns goats have been having babies not as fast as your Moms but we got seven in a week so not to bad. My silver fence sure is pretty Thanks again Nick. Take care and be careful. Rita
You guys are making great progress--love reading the blog. I think it is unblocked now at school so I can show the kids, and Clayton got me a map of the trail printed while we were there, so I am set. Take care and keep posting!
The kids and I are having a great time following your progress! We have several questions for you. How do you gain access to the Internet? How did you get the idea of going on the hike? Do you have to register for it/pay for it? Do you have a map that you are following? Do you have to defend yourselves against wild animals/predators? If so, how? I think that's it for now! Take care! We look forward to your next blog. Kim P.
I like the picture where you two are in two different states, that is so freaking neat. Thanks for answering my question about the book exchange...I can see how that would work...or not. Your pictures are so totally rad the tree picture and moutains with fog is really super awesome good. Oh and you two should have taken over the stone tower for a couple days, pretended like you were Kings, but you would need a flag, do you have a flag? Better get one, I will make you one but you need a country name like Saratopia or something. P.S. I would have totally been diggin' on those M&M's with Nick, I would never last, you guys rock!
Post a Comment