Our first night out at Wayah Shelter Mr. Green Tea and I continued our Bear Bag Challenge and I continued to loose terribly. We spent about an hour trying to achieve the perfect bear bag only to wake up around 3 am to hear a rather large animal checking it out. After multiple attempts to wake MGT Spokes came to the rescue and we scared whatever it was away with our lights. A pair of hikers from Israel had seen a bear earlier in the week and lost all their food the following night.
The next two days were uneventful aside from one solid wipe out, some more trail magic in the form of oranges/hot chocolate, and laying up on a sunny fire tower being lizards for an hour or so during lunch. Generally I'm hiking alone during the day with friends 10 minutes ahead and behind until meeting up for lunch and at shelters or campsites. Gin Rummy and fires at night - not to mention the awesome classic rock station we are able to channel in where before we only had country and fuzzy josh groban stations.
Sadly, Adam has to head back home to Indiana to start his new job. We left a car here at Fontana expecting it to take us two weeks to reach and then leaving together. I need to eventually get off the trail 1-2 weeks in early April to find out where I've gotten into graduate school, find an apartment there, switch out some gear, etc etc. However we hiked into Fontana 3 days early and are standing right at the base of the Smoky Mts. with full packs and friends. So I decided to press on another few days and make it to a town were a friend from Asheville can pick me up without too much trouble...
Finch enjoying the sunshine
Cards at one of the shelters
