We were looking forward to getting back on the trail today after our rest day. We had the remainder of the granola kindly given to us yesterday for breakfast, packed our packs, settled our hotel bill and got a shuttle back to Fontana 28 AT crossing and were hiking for 8:45.
We hiked a mile to the Fontana Hilton shelter, so named because it has showers & toilet facilities. There were a few hikers there getting ready to hit the trail. Just down the road was the Fontana Dam itself and visitor centre/gift shop. The visitor centre was not open yet, too early in the season. We're glad we didn't rely on picking any food supplies up from there. A mile from the dam we entered the southern end of The Great Smokey Mountains National Park where we had to deposit our permits in the thru hiker permit box.
It was a steady 7 mile hike uphill to Doe Knob where we temporarily crossed over the North Carolina boarder into Tennessee, but were soon back in NC. Apparently the whole trail through the park follows the NC/TN boarder so we're constantly crossing it. We met a couple of thru hikers on the way, Trish & Jesse. They had been chasing us along the trail apparently, as they had read our comments in the trail registers and just missed us yesterday at The Pitstop. We saw our first deer today, a Whitetail deer, on the way up too. It was a cloudy start today but we had sunny spells by the afternoon. From Doe Knob it was down and then up again to Mollies Ridge Shelter where we bumped into the 3 section hikers we had seen in Hiawassee, Tritan, Walrus and Dos. They had lit a fire at Mollies shelter but then discovered there was no water there so they decided to carry on to the next shelter, Russell Field Shelter where we were heading for the night. We arrived at 4:15pm shortly followed by the Hiawassee three and then Trish & Jesse. The Hiawassee three are a group of three older guys and good fun to be around. It's us 7 at the shelter tonight. The Smokies Park rules say that you have to stay in the shelters if there is room and can only camp if the shelters are full. It's a quiet time of year so the shelters are unlikely to get full so we probably have to brave the shelters for the next 5 nights. The shelters in the smokies though all have fire places, so the guys got a fire going which was nice and warmed the shelter slightly. The shelters are still three sided but a bit more substantial built of brick and wood, they do have sheets of tarpaulin across the front to keep out the wind. We had a good nights sleep, waking on and off as usual. I didn't hear any mice and only one person was snoring but not too loud! I did hear an animal briefly snuffling around the back of the shelter in the night, maybe a wild hog?
It was forecast for rain overnight but luckily we got away with only a very quick light rain shower.
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