Day 2 Stover Creek Shelter to Gooch Gap

Miles today 14.4.  AT total 17.2

We woke up about 7.15 not long after sunrise. The rain had just about stopped although lots of rain water was still dripping from the trees. Nigel recovered our food bags from the bear cables, luckily everything inside was still dry, I did worry about them during the heavy rain in the night. We had breakfast, porridge or oatmeal as its called here, a daily staple breakfast from now on!  We packed up and started walking at 9am.
After a damp start the weather improved and we had a glorious sunny day, perfect for walking with a nice cool wind. We walked for a while through rhododendron forest which was a nice change from bare leafless forest. The AT is nicknamed The Green Tunnel because the majority of the trail goes through wood.  The bare trees though this time of year mean we do get glimpses of views across the mountains, when the trees are in full leaf later on in the year you'd get to see nothing but trees.
We had a few streams to cross today, luckily they weren't too swollen after all the rain last night and easy to cross via stepping stones. The trail consisted of lots of gentle ups and downs today on easy paths.  We stopped on the top of Sassafras Mountain for a quick sandwich break in the sun.  Shortly after we passed a few other thru hikers on our way to Gooch Mountain Shelter where we stopped for an hours break.  The other hikers gradually arrived at the shelter and we had a nice chat with them.  We met Dale, trail name Redleg, who we had been chatting with via Facebook, it was lovely to meet him.
After an hours break in the sun we carried on walking though for another mile and a half to Gooch Gap where we set up camp for the night.  We wanted to go a bit further while we had time and the weather was nice still so we don't have so many miles to do to get to our target of Neels Gap tomorrow.  We are the only ones at this camp spot tonight.
We set up our tent and Nigel cooked Mac and cheese for dinner (he loves camp cooking).  Nigel also did a great job of bear bagging on his first attempt - no bear cables so we have to hang our food from a high tree branch instead.
It's colder tonight, with clearer sky's, but at least it's dry and no wind either.
Another great day walking.

Not long after we had tucked ourselves away in our tent some hikers walked past us in the dark. We had our blue water bag hung from a low branch on a tree behind our tent (looks like a blue balloon in photo) and we heard them say ' what kinda bear bag is that'! Made us laugh. It was a much colder 2nd night, 3°C when we woke but we were warm enough.