So the next part of our North Carolina trip was a four day hike of the Appalachian Trail. Like on our Florida trip we had to split into two groups because you are only allowed to book six spots at the camp sites. My group was the all girls group with Melinda, Laura, and Heidi. We started at Fontana Dam and ended at Clingmans Dome. Our first day was approximately a ten mile hike, unfortunately it rained until lunch and then was fogy for the rest of the day. The terrain was up and down throughout the four days and we barely saw a flat piece of land at all. The uphill hurt my muscles, but the downhill hurt my joints and feet more. As a group we preferred going uphill to downhill....it’s kind of funny to think that we were rejoicing when we would start to go uphill....who does that!?!
The coolest part of hiking the AT is that everyone gets trail names, you either come up with your own or one gets bestowed on you. On our first day we met a man named Warren (who we called Santa because he had a white beard) and he found out when we started hiking that morning and then proceeded to tell us that we weren’t too fast. After talking to him we decided to call ourselves the Canadian Kayaking Ninja Turtles. Canadian...is self explanatory (unless you’re Laura who is Australian), Kayaking because we were much better at kayaking than hiking, Ninja because well that’s just cool, and Turtles because that’s how fast we hiked. But people could never remember our name so they just called us the TMNT.
On our first morning we woke up to frost on the trees and snow on the ground. Wow, ya we weren’t prepared for that. So we tried to keep warm while walking through a winter wonderland. Throughout the day it was like we were walking through the different seasons. On one side of the ridge there would be snow and then on the other the sun was shining and there would be flowers.
By the end of the week we had a reputation that preceded us. On our last night we met a guy named Nick who was doing a week hike just for fun. We asked him if he had heard anything about us and his response was that meals with us were very interesting. This was very true! First of all we had brought a pot that held about 4-5 litres, and since when you are hiking you bring as little as possible we were made fun of every night. It was also due to the fact that people don’t really hike the trail in groups like us so they are used to pots the size of your fist. Also we had some issues with our food not rehydrating to an edible fashion as well as some very starchy spaghetti. But I think the thing that made cooking the most memorable is that we would always end up laughing at ourselves. Everyone at the campsite would hear our running commentary how terrible our food was going to be and then we would offer our leftovers to them....weirdly enough most people declined our generous offer.
But by far the best part of the hike was the fact that you meet people for a night or sometimes two and you feel like family the minute you meet.
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