We left Blue Lake Friday morning around 7 and about 3 hours later we visited the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Museum. It's located at one of the airports they trained at in Alabama. We had a very enjoyable time looking back at this amazing part of our country's history. The museum was nicely done and will expand to another hanger this coming September.
After the museum we drove to Sam's Club in Auburn AL and spend time looking for food and treats that we could pass out to some of this years crop of Appalachian Trail hikers. We decided on hot dogs, apples, bananas, assorted bags of chips, blueberry & banana nut muffins, mini donuts, and of course Coke, Mountain Dew and Pepsi to drink. Joyce also baked up a bunch of cookies for the hikers too. We then found a nice campsite at Fort Mountain State Park in northern Georgia. Saturday we drove up to the Fontana Dam area and got campsite at the Fontana Lodge. This put us within 10 miles of Stecoah Gap where the AT crosses Hwy 137.
Trail Magic on Easter Sunday
We found a campsite just below the Fontana Dam, which is part the Fontana Resort. The campground was not too far from Stecoah Gap where the Appalachian Trail crosses about 18 miles south of where thru-hikers enter the southern end of Great Smokey Mountain NP. It rained all night long but was just cloudy at daybreak. We headed out to Robinsville, fueled up the truck and bought ice for the cooler and were at Stecoah Gap by 1030 or so.
Four hikers were coming down the trail just as we pulled up so we were able to get the magic going right away. Push-up a pleasant young man from New Brunswick Canada, Beerdra a nice young lady from New York state, Bones, Waffles - from Belgium, and Foxtrot from Grand Rapids. They all enjoyed the magic and stayed around for awhile and chatted while eating. Next came a lady named Jane from Hiawasee GA who was doing a section hike. A threesome of 2 sisters and Roadkill, the husband of one showed up. They were section hikers and Roadkill had injured his leg. They called Jeff & Nancy from the Hike Inn to shuttle them back to their car. It was fun to see Nancy again who remembered us from 2 years ago when we stayed with them. A gentleman from Illinois named Moonshiner showed up next. He had been having a bad day and said we were just what he needed today. A few locals stopped by and took some time to chat with us. One guy had his Golden-doodle, named Moose, with him. We enjoyed petting Moose a lot. About that time Rabbit, from Virginia Tech, showed up and enjoyed the treats. He was fun to talk with…said his original trail name was Slug, but he was renamed shortly after starting the trail due to the his quick pace he does on the trail.
Finally around 3:15 the rain moved in along with about 5 or 6 more hikers. We got them fed well and after a half and or more in the rain we decided to pack up and head back to our trailer to warm up and dry out.
Just as we were ready to pull out 2 more hikers came down the trail so Tberry ran over and gave them each a bag of chips and a few cookies to take with them.
All in all we probably served close to 20 hikers today. All were very appreciative and we were so pleased to meet and treat them all. A nice way to enjoy Easter Sunday as we had the opportunity to serve others.
Rabbit enjoying Moose
Monday morning we hooked up the trailer and drove around to the northeast side of the Great Smokey Mountains NP and tried to camp at Cosby campground. We found it to be closed still until April 12th due to budget constraints. (too bad we can't get the Prez & VP to stay home in Washington more and save the $ for the National parks.) We drove a narrow, winding road for 8 miles to where the AT leaves the park. There wasn't enough room there to park the truck and trailer so we drove on down this narrow road to the Pigeon River near I40 where the AT comes out again about a mile or so beyond the park. We set up and enjoyed sitting in the sunshine watching for hikers to come down the trail on one side and enjoying river rafters on the other. About 12:30 our first hikers showed up. "Packrat", ZZ Topless", Ned - from Wales, "Eagle Runner", "Grim" and "Doc & Boon" enjoyed the food and relaxing with us for close to an hour. It was again fun to hear stories of their struggles and joys from the first few weeks of their hikes. Around 3 or so "Linus", Dan and "Whiteout" showed up to enjoy the final round of trail magic. We had an enjoyable day passing out TM and getting to know some of this years fine group Thru-hikers. Around 4 we packed up and headed to Cove Lake state park, about 30 miles north of Knoxville, to find a campsite for the night. Two days of passing out trail magic was over. We sure enjoyed ourselves a lot. It was a good time to remember the many wonderful times hiking the AT along with the tough times. Most of all the memories of all the wonderful people we met along the trail.
