The 1st weekend of June was awesome for me. I met The Goat and Rain Man in Wytheville, VA and rode down to Erwin, TN with them. We slept in the parking lot of Uncle Johnny's Hostel on Friday night. Saturday morning we spotted the motor home at Iron Mountain Gap and got shuttle service back to Spivey Gap where we started our hike. We actually had 2 different shuttle drivers, Sarge and 10K. They were both a wealth of knowledge, (which we took full advantage of). Sarge was really funny. He told us the story of Mary the elephant (google it). He also told us to watch out for the dreaded Hoop Snake, you know the snake that bites it's tail and then rolls down the trail chasing you? Very venomous he said. hhhhmmmm. I think this story probably works best on city folk. ha ha
The weather was really good Saturday. Sunny and hot. We were talking about how that it usually rains when they are hiking. That is how Rain Man got his name. I told them that they could thank me for the nice weather. I always bring the sunshine with me. They both said that should be my name. I like it. Sunshine, it is.

We got a pretty late start, because of all the driving, spotting the vehicle and getting shuttles, so we planed to hike back to Uncle Johnny's and eat lunch there.

We came across this. Apparently there is a lot of Norovirus going around on the trail this year.

Over looking the Nolichucky River Valley.

This was pretty gnarly.

We ate lunch and took off for the Curly Maple Shelter, where we were going to spend the night. We got there about 6 that evening. Plenty of time to purify water and cook supper. We were all tired. We were in our sleeping bags by 8:00

The Curly Maple Shelter

I woke up at about 11:00 that night to a hard rain. I didn't know it them, but that was a sign of what the weather would be like on Sunday.

We got up at 6:30 Sunday and had breakfast and packed up. We were on the trail by 7:30. It was overcast, but the weather forecast was for showers mid afternoon. We thought we would be done by then. Well we were wrong. It started raining about an hour later and it rained the rest of the day. Oh well, it can't always be sunny.

This was a really nice creek that we walked along

All in all it was a great weekend. That is the 1st time I carried a heavy pack. We covered about 15-16 miles both days. I had an awesome time. Can't wait till next time.