11 May 2016, Wednesday We are both awake, lying in the tent around 5:40 am. In the distance we canhear the rumble of thunder. Our tent is still dry, and we would liketo pack it up that way – so we are out and taking it down by 6am. The Quarterdome is neatly stowed in Jazz just in time. Soon theskies open and we take shelter under the tarp as we
10 May 2016, Tuesday Today’s destination is Charlies Bunion, an 8.2 mile hike along the ATbeginning at Newfound Gap, right on the NC-TN border. We have adelicious breakfast of potato cakes enhanced with cheddar cheese,bacon jerky and dehydrated egg whites. It may not sound great, but itis nicely browned and very tasty. We drive over to the Sugarlands Visitor Center, stop there briefly, and thenhead up Newfound Gap Road, which divides
9 May 2016, Monday We are up at 6:45 am waking to a warm cloudy morning. Today we will hike toa lookout on Mount Cammerer, a route described as “strenuous due toelevation gain.” We are on the trail at 9:45. We each carry our 750 mlwater bottles in addition to an extra 1 liter bottle to be shared. Itis a beautiful, but sweaty 2.9 miles as we climb up to theAppalachian
8 May 2016, Sunday We are up early this morning and busy. We leave our room quickly to return toSunny Point Cafe. They open at 8 and we guess they will be busy sinceit is Mother’s Day. We arrive at 7:44 am, the first car in theparking lot. The lot is full within 5 minutes of our arrival. We areseated promptly and enjoy another delicious breakfast; carrot cakepancakes for me with
7 May 2016, Saturday We awake about 7 am. Some surrounding campers are already up and havesmokey fires burning. We quickly take down our mostly dry tent andhead for Asheville, stopping at a scenic overlook on the road out ofCataloochee to admire the view and photograph the resident Towhee. We reach Sunny Point Cafe for breakfast without difficulty, but we have to park waydown the residential street as the parking lot
6 May 2016, Friday The rain has stopped. The official weather report confirms that 3 inchesof snow fell at higher elevations. We cannot see any snow from hereand that’s fine with me. We eat our breakfast and elect to lazearound camp, drying out, cataloging some of our flower photos, makingsome modifications to our backpacks and finding a number ofwildflowers right in our own backyard. We watch as Cataloochee Campground goes from
5 May 2016, Thursday No snow, but fairly steady showers through the night. We wake thismorning to clouds and damp, but no rain when we get out of the tent.It does sprinkle as we eat our cardamom-cherry oatmeal. The forecastfor today is “partly cloudy” this morning with intermittentshowers this afternoon. This apparently means cloudy this morningwith a two minute break in the clouds and steady cold rain thisafternoon with about two
4 May 2016, Wednesday Here we sit in the pleasantly cool evening, the sky clouding a bit,waiting for our rice to cook for our dinner of Punjab Choley, as wesip our wine and munch some crackers. We woke this morning about7:15 am. It was cool and cloudy. We have muffins, yogurt, grapes and coffeefor breakfast as we decide which trail to hike. We settle on theCaldwell Fork-Rough Fork loop, a 9.4
3 May 2016, Tuesday By the time we are ready to get up this morning the rain has stopped. We useour body wipes to take a “bath” and feel pretty refreshed andpresentable enough for eating at restaurants on our way to Cataloochee campground.Breakfast is at Le Peeps in Columbia, then we acquire some muffins at The Wired Goat for tomorrow’sbreakfast, ‘wired’ apparently referring to a caffeinehigh. We are now on the
2 May 2016 We wake to the sound of a distant owl calling, “who cooks for you?” (Barred owl) Theair is so moist that the woods around our tent look misty. At leastthe air is a bit cooler than yesterday. Breakfast is blueberry sconesbaked in our frittata pan on the Coleman stove. The coffee is prettygood with our unrefrigerated mini-moo creamers. We take our time this morning, first returning to the