We’re in the Smokies! It’s my first time to this national park and if the food we’re eating tonight is any indication, it is going to be a great stay!

The trick with the food, of course, is that we lugged it all in ourselves. Dinner tonight was hamburger, peppers, onion, mushrooms, and carrots. Based on Rockhounds experience in the scouts, we tossed all these ingredients into aluminum foil with spices and cooked over the coals of a wood fire. Oh yeah, and we had tortilla chips and salsa as an appetizer. It was downright civilized!

Did I mention the bad part yet? That was entering the park with seven days of food and a PACK WEIGHT OF NEARLY 40 POUNDS! I’ve carried more than 50 lbs backpacking before, but not in my minimally padded Mountainsmith Ghost pack! The onion and salsa were two pounds by themselves! At least I’m looking forward to not carrying them tomorrow. Dinner was planned and eaten with D and the Jaybirds, Rockhound and Nick – a young British guy we met yesterday.

Also staying at this shelter are three slightly older guys who have been hiking the AT in sections with two other friends and relatives for the past seven years. Their friends are missing because one’s mom is in the hospital and the other was suffering from sciatica and turned back. So we had to help them finish the awesome steak they had brought. A thru-hikers life really does revolve around food, doesn’t it?

The shelter’s very different. It’s much larger than the AT shelters we’ve see over the past 2 weeks. And it has a fireplace in the shelter. Oh, and it has chainlink fence on the open face of the shelter to keep the bears out!

We did a good 12 miles up some tough terrain today. The most memorable mile was at the end of the hike when Rockhound strained a butt muscle and D and I took turns hauling his pack along with our packs! We met Yertle – He’s walking at twice our pace. And met Boudreaux – a SOBO hiker who started in VA, is hiking to Springer Mt, then heading to Maine and hiking south again to VA. I’m looking forward to running into him in New England.

Time to sleep and dream of bears…