Best View Yet

We got up from a restful night. It had started off calm and turned to a typical windy fall morning as if there was some deadline to get all the colorful leaves to the ground before a certain time. The alarm went off at 7:20am and finally we listened to it and got moving. This was our earliest morning yet on the trail which is funny since we never stayed up past 10:00pm. It is amazing how long you can sleep when you have been walking over mountains all day long with a heavy pack. I got our food bags out of the tree, Abigail cooked breakfast and I tore down the tent. After eating breakfast we headed out.
Since the trail was downhill, we soon reached Indian Grave Gap and started the climb to Beauty Spot. This turned out to be our best view yet on the trip. While heading up to the top we also found a cell phone. We are still in the process of finding the owner. Limited service and the lack of determination on the part of the people we have called on it has made the reuniting of the phone and owner proving to be difficult. All I can say is that Beauty Spot was rightly named with nearly 360 degree views of the surrounding area. It was clear and we met a group of four folks around our age from Ohio that took our picture. They were interested in the trail and had a few questions. Mostly the norm like
"How do you carry a months worth of food with you?" and
"What work do you do that allows you to take that much time off?".
(For the food we resupply in towns and have planned ahead and ship boxes to ourselves thanks to my parents. We never carry more than a weeks worth of food at a time. As for work, we are between jobs)

It was nice company and we ate lunch, chatted and just appreciated the view.
On the way down the other side we soon reached a nice little spring, pumped our water and continued for the climb up Unaka Mountain. Unaka in Cherokee means White. The top was amazing not because of the view but because of the fir trees. Even this far south at over 5000 feet the fir trees prevail. It reminded both of us of the mossy, evergreen forests of Alaska and Maine. We passed a pleasant thru hiker named Bobcat and continued on to Cherry Gap Shelter where we ate dinner and again resupplied water.
At almost every shelter on the Appalachian Trail there is a nearby spring or stream for water. They position the shelters that way for the convenience of the hikers. We also like to eat in a different location than where we camp so that there is even less of a likelihood of attracting bears and other animals. It is unlikely that they would bother us but why not take the precautions?
It was getting late but we managed a few more miles and finished up on the other side of Iron Mountain on a small side trail that was reasonably flat. It is amazing because as short as our history is here in the U.S. we have managed to make quite the impact on our landscapes. By this I do not mean to relate to the mass deforestation of our lands or draining of swamps but the changes we have made and forgotten about like in these eastern woodlands we are hiking through. Everyday over every mile we hike through mostly National Forest and all of this area was once logged and probably clear cut. However, today you would never know. Fairly often we come across old logging trails that cut into the hillside but have been grown over. An old fence line that is falling down from old age, an overgrown apple orchard or an old bootlegging trail back from the days of prohibition.
So there we set up camp on the old side trail cut into the hillside by the hard work of some mountain men and forgotten about so many years ago now to be used as a convenient place to set up a tent. We soon found ourselves snoozing in our sleeping bags ready for a new day of hiking and adventure.

Chris