Day 70 - Thursday, May 20, 2021

We left Uncle Johnny’s and didn’t go back... I know you must be surprised about that 🙄. We actually made arrangements to go to a local hotel before we even left the Cabin. We may try another hostel, Nature Ways Hostel & Cabins for the next few nights down in Flag Pond, TN. We’re hoping that we can just camp from the truck and use their facilities. But in the meantime we’re slack packing out of the Mountain Inn & Suites Hotel in Erwin, TN 😉.

Today we continued  hiking from Spivey Gap, US 19 (333.1 NoBo) to  Sam’s Gap, US 23, I-26 (319.7 NoBo) for a total of 13.4 miles. 

We began hiking at 9:15 am under clear sunny skies. The temperature was already 67°. 










Started right off with a little friendly climb. Tends to warm you up fairly quickly .









Views from Big Bald Mountain...


White Fringed Phacellia are everywhere on the mountain side.







We met “Veal” today hiking NoBo. He left Springer on April 24th. I didn’t want to tell him his trail name is not so good - he has a short life expectancy being a veal calf 🤭. He’s from Raleigh, NC but actually worked in Syracuse a couple years ago. 






Some of the views are amazing. They say the views in the Smokey’s are unbelievable. We are scheduled to begin hiking through them beginning Wednesday of next week.









Another panoramic view from Big Bald. 



We passed “Lizard & Dack” on and off all day. We finally had a chance to chat with them when they showed up behind us at Spivey Gap. They left Springer on April 27th but had to skip the Smokey’s because they had their dog (dogs are not allowed in the Smokey’s because of the bears).

We finished hiking at 4:25 pm. The skies were sunny and the temperature was 76°. It was another beautiful day for hiking. We dropped off another hiker at Uncle Johnny’s 🤢. 


Till next time.... Happy Hiking  🥾 

😋


“You gotta have passion for life and passion for something that you're going to get up and do,".    

                                Meredith “Sunny” Eberhart  







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