Bud and Vicki Hogan's 1996 Appalachian Trail Journey
June 22
Erwin to Beauty Spot Gap.....................................................................................12 miles
Got up and waited for Lou Ann's husband, Dee, to arrive. He was right on time. He took us out to the spot where we had left the trail, and off we went. Straight down the road towards the campground. We kept looking, but hadn't seen any blazes. We kept walking, knowing that sometimes the blazes are pretty far apart. We got to the restrooms, and decided that we had screwed up again. Back we went, to where we had been dropped off 40 minutes earlier. There it was, plain as all of the rest of them, the white blaze that we hadn't looked up to see.
Back on the trail again. Today's hike is mostly uphill, although not to steep. We met several people out hiking today. One young couple was gathering something out in the woods. Wintergreen. And it was. Exactly the same smell as wintergreen certs or wintergreen anything else. I had the best time finding wintergreen and sassafras. It wouldn't take to long out in the woods with someone with the proper knowledge to learn quite a lot about the local herbs.
Past Beauty Spot, we were looking for the water and camping area. Walked right passed it, and started uphill. Second time today that we made a small error. Not to bad. Decided that we had gone to far, so we backtracked 10 minutes and found the spring and camp area just across the road.
This was the only time that we camped near a road. I wasn't happy to camp there, but it looked better than any other camp site in the area. Oh, well. Not to much traffic and it died out fairly early. During our hike we had become more concerned about human threats than about animal threats. We slept with our food inside the tent. (yeah, yeah, I know. I'm not to bright, sometimes.) We hadn't hung our food since we left the Smokies. Bears-smares, we now wanted to see one, and we hadn't.
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