Day 21

Day 21 - Double Spring Gap Shelter to Newfound Gap (to Gatlinburg, TN) - 11 miles - (205 total)
Woke up early to a chilly and cold morning. To be clear, there are no late mornings in shelters - often the earlybirds start getting up waaayyy before first light - so it's virtually impossible to sleep in later than 6am. We were hiking by 7 or 7:30 and it was a really nice hike up to Clingman's Dome aside from the fact that it was all upwards. Near the Clingman's area it was cool to watch the trees change from predominantly deciduous ones to a majority of conifers- something we hadn't really seen for the past 200 miles. Although it was still really hazy from the lack of rain and over-abundance of pollen in the air, we got some pretty good views to the south as the trees began to thin out on our climb up. We soon reached the summit, and found it to be deserted except for the thru-hikers we had stayed with at the shelter because the road leading to the top was closed. It was evident that it was a bad winter up there; there were tons of downed trees and it looked like a hurricane had rolled through the already hurting summit (there is the obvious problem of the conifers dying off en masse above 6000 ft. from pollution and pests). We stopped at the observation tower, said hello to the first ranger we've seen, and went to check out the view. It was really hazy from the pollen- only 30-40 miles visibility when on a clear day you can 'normally' see up to a 100 miles on a clear day. After a snack, we headed down to Newfound Gap so that we could hitch a ride into Gatlinburg to re-supply. After awkwardly looking for a hitch, with no luck, we were lucky to catch a ride from the new NOC's Gatlinburg Outpost shuttle. Kevin, the driver, had just moved from Seattle (he lived in Wallingford and worked at REI)- what a small world. He gave us a ride to the Grocery store, then back to town to get a room, which saved us a full day of riding the 'trolley'. Checked into the Grand Prix Motel, showered, walked to Burger King for some good greasy food, and too a quick look around town. Afterwards, we headed back to the room for a beer and to write some journal entries. Around 10pm we went for a walk around town and laura loved the tackiness of Gatlinburg on a friday night. Bought fudge and ice cream, which we took back to our room. We fell asleep way after our bedtime and hiker-midnight (it was actual midnight!) watching the local tourism channel after a nice sugar overdose.