Trail Journal

We were able to sleep in quite a bit in our Fontana beds.  By 11am we had become restless, so we set off to explore the village.  We visited the local outfitter store, Hazel Creek Outfitter, and used their computer.  We were going to stop and eat lunch at the little grill, but the place was crawling, and I mean crawling with kids and teens.  We had to get out of there, and fast.  We made tracks to the restaurant once again and devoured a hearty lunch.  Later, we ventured down to the small grocery and general store to buy a few supplies and gifts.  It was there that Brian engaged a harmless bee to the relief of the scared little Fontana cashier girl.  She ran and squealed as Sean and I watched.  I was enjoying a small tub of ice cream, and Brian was quite entertaining.

We ran into Mississippi a couple of times while in Fontana.  He was staying with his mother in one of the cabins at the resort.  From what they had said at the front desk, most of the cabins lacked air conditioning, so I felt bad for the guy.  But just a day earlier we had all cringed with envy upon him telling us about his waiting cabin.  Sean ended up playing some pool with him for awhile.  Little did we know, it would be the very last time we ever saw Mississippi.

We visited the restaurant for a third time and devoured our last civilized meal.  We had to tell the little waitress girl that Sean and been flirting with goodbye.  He made sure she had his number, even though she was "sort of engaged", whatever that meant.  Brian was going to stop here at Fontana, and Sean and I would be the only ones left continuing on the trip.  We had very mixed feelings about this.  On one hand we were sad to lose our third man, but on the other hand we were extremely proud of Brian for making it out this far and sticking with us despite his injury.  He had maintained a positive attitude the entire time, and we were going to miss him.  We shed all of the gear we possibly could and crawled in the public safety SUV around 8:30pm with light loads and confident smiles.

Sean borrowed Brian's hiking poles for the next leg of the trip.  Almost immediately, he was sent tumbling down the trail from his lack of coordination with the new poles.  I was laughing hysterically.  At 9pm we approached the Fontana "Hilton", an amazing shelter on the edge of Fontana Lake.  A large group had already assembled there and built an inviting fire.  Nine people were at the shelter that night.  Four were traveling together in a group more or less attempting a late thru-hike.  One of the girls was from Sweden.  Another fella had been zeroing at the shelter unable to determine his next move.  He had been pacing with a fast thru-hiker group the week before in the Smokies when he burnt out and came back to Fontana.  His only plans were to climb Shuckstack again and "take some pictures", then climb back down.  I felt bad for the guy.  Two Asian-looking guys came strolling in around midnight from the dam after taking showers.  They began to cook dinner and make a whole lot of racket.  Sean and I were still up talking (and chasing a frog around), but everyone else was asleep.  Idiots.

That night one of those guys slept on the same platform as me.  He had some terrible sort of dream that sounded like he was wrestling, then choking some sort of beast.  He gargled and flung himself around violently with fists clenched kicking the floor and making terrible sounds with his mouth.  I was truly scared.  Because of this strange kid, I didn't sleep as well as I wanted.