I can't believe we walked that far...

19 miles. Holy cow. We planned to stop at Wayah Bald, but the camping wasn't excellent, and for some reason, we felt like moving. We linked up with a guy known as Flick a few days ago, and have been hiking and camping together. His hiking partner went into town to rest a sore knee. We had already eaten dinner from the fire tower at the top of the Bald, and had plenty of energy. Rain was supposed to come in, but the skies were still clear. We strapped on our headlamps and did the first night hiking of the trip.

It was about 5 miles to the next shelter, which we thought we would hit by 11:00 pm at the latest. The air temperature was pretty warm, and the trail turned out to be soft and easy to follow. At one point, after the forest had gotten completely dark, we all turned off our headlamps and looked up to gaze at the stars. We instinctively reached for our cameras, but put them away....this is just one of those things that you actually have to come into the forest at night to see, a photo doesn't do it justice.

One cool thing we walked through was a section of burned out forest. They had just finished a controlled burn the day before, and while we didn't see anything smoldering, the smell of smoke was strong in the air.

We heard coyotes and owls, and saw the distance lights of Franklin, NC from the top of a ridge. Time passed quickly, and I didn't even feel like I had been walking all day. To keep the scary critters away, we chatted while we walked. It was a great chance to get to know Flick and to share some of our past adventures and misadventures.

Then, suddenly, in the distance, I saw an orange glow. This is sort of creepy in the woods in the middle of the night. As we got closer, we passed a sign that said Trail Magic ahead. And so it was. Apple, a guy who camps out in this spot for about a month every spring, had not gone to bed yet and he invited us into his giant orange dome tent for some coke and oreos and hot dogs for Flick. Since it was so late, he also invited us to sleep there, and in the morning, he cooked us cinnamon rolls in a small propane oven. Talk about Magic! Surprisingly, we all felt pretty good the next day, despite the high miles.