Day 44

Wow, was the thunderstorm last night impressive! It started out like a light snow. You would have thought there was a rave going on in the woods. It started like heat lightning as it was a lot of flashing but only rumbles were in the very far distance not reaching me. Then it got close! Very close! Massive flashes of light and bone shaking thunder with massive rain drops. It went from that to all of a sudden, pure sheets of rain so hard it didn’t sound like rain drops on my tent but a pool being dumped on me. The tent shook so hard I put a hand up against it like I could actually stop it from collapsing under the weight of the water. As fast as it started, it passed and went back to just rain the rest of the night and I could see the light show continue further and further away. Made for an interesting night. My tent held up amazingly well. I’m loving my duplex. There was one corner where rain sprays were coming in and it seems funny now but I literally put my umbrella up, inside the tent, next to my head. What a night. It’s amazing how fast the weather can change. Even with the thunderstorm, it was the warmest night I’ve spent yet. First time sleeping in just a shirt, underwear and sleep socks. Today was fairly cool and sunny and as I’m typing this in my tent at Cherry Gap Shelter, I have all my layers on and it’s really cold again! Tonight could get back down to freezing. Tomorrow is listed as “rain and snow likely.” Saturday is “freezing rain and snow before 2pm” and then “30% chance of snow until 8pm” so I’m hoping to get off trail tomorrow and stay in town in a hotel one more time. I don’t want to spend another zero but I’ll look to see what’s happening. Looks like it’s sunshine and decent temps for Sunday and onward. Jason is coming out to meet me in a week so I have to plan out a road crossing where I’ll be on the 14th. That should help me decide my game plan for the next few days. Back to today, I enjoyed the climb over Beauty Spot but what I really liked today was Unaka Mountain. It was a tough climb but once at the top, I really enjoyed the spruce and fir forest. It reminded me of the forest in E.T. I would have loved to camp up there if the weather was better. According to my Garmin watch, I hiked a total of 15.37 miles from my stealth site to this shelter. I climbed a total of 4,698 feet and walked down 2,598 feet. It was a good day. For dinner, I tried something new: I boiled water and dumped in cornbread stuffing, cut up cured turkey sticks and right before eating, I mixed in Fritos for crunch. Not bad! I have enough left to do it again too! Yum! Sorry, no pic of dinner. I was too hungry. It looked like cornbread mush basically. G’night!