Day 17

Last night we had three other hikers join us at the lodge.  Ironically, all three have Massachusetts roots.  Josh and Morgan live in Concord.  A young couple who quit there jobs to do a thru hike.  They don’t have trail names yet.

Art (trail name - Blue Guy) is a retired man about my age who grew up in Concord but has been living in Seattle for some time.  I had met him on the trail several days ago but he is traveling at a slower pace.  

They all came into the lodge to escape the storm.  They got the shuttle from an earlier road crossing than we did. We had actually gone a good ways past the lodge on our hike and shuttled back to it.  So we are a few days ahead of them on the trail.  Hope that makes sense.

Art had a harrowing experience the night before he got to the lodge.  A tree fell at his camp site at around 3am about 20 yards from his tent.  It took out another tent but luckily the main section did not hit the tent just some branches.  Both campers in the tent survived.  But their tent was destroyed.  The man was not injured but the woman sustained a shoulder injury.  They were able to hike out to a trail head and met there by an ambulance.  We asked Art where this was and he said Licklock Gap.  Yikes, that is where we stayed and I saw the sunrise from my sleeping bag. We camped there at the end of my day 13 and saw sunrise on day 14.  

With these additional New Englanders, Dave (ADD) who is from Hoover, Alabama is now surrounded by Yankees but this is constantly changing.  People stay away from politics on the trail.  It’s mostly gear, weather, background, family and interesting experiences that make up trail conversations.  Dave has a you tube channel and is posting some videos of the hike on it.  I think I’m in some.  Look for “Hiking with ADD” on you tube and I think you will find it.  I also found out that ADD was a for real cowboy at the Philmont ranch in New Mexico back in his younger days and is now a geologist.

Sandy grew up in Nantucket but moved to the Franconia NH area about ten years ago.  Both are beautiful places but very different.  I find it so intriguing to think about what causes people to make such changes in their lives.  Hiking gives you time to reflect on your own decisions which moved your life in a certain direction and to speculate how things might have gone differently had you made different choices or had other opportunities or lack there of.  But I digress.  Back to the matters at hand.

We changed our plan.  The weather looks to be more severe today than tomorrow.  Heavy rain and winds with afternoon thunderstorms are the forecast for today.  Tomorrow it will be cooler but rain will be less severe.  So we are zeroing today and slack packing the section to Fontana Dam tomorrow.  Then we jump into the Smokys.

Josh and Morgan are braving it and getting back on the trail today.  It’s going to be wet!  Art is shuttling to a different lodge as there is no room here for him tonight.  We are going the golden blazing route and staying dry and comfy today.

The lodge is expecting a full house tonight so we  will get to meet more hikers later today.

We also learned that Steve and Maggie are retiring this year and will be looking to sell the lodge soon.  That’s a shame and they will be missed.  They have a nice place and have been great hosts.  I’ll see if I can get their picture before we head out.