May 17 mile 414

It rained all last night, but we were dry and cozy in our tents. Thanks Big Agnes, the tent company. Got up and packed up all gear in the drizzling rain. Most things pretty dry except our tents isms fly, of course. Just messy putting everything away. Due to rain ate a fruit bar fir breakfast ( not very satisfying) and trudged off. Decided to make coffee and breakfast at the next shelter area 5 miles away. Hiked through lots of ups and downs, not particularly noteworthy, made breakfast, finally, giving me a an energy boost and then onward to get near Hampton TN to resupply. Wanted to stay at a very famous hiker hostel at Dennis Cove- Konkora- but it is all full up with trail maintenance volunteers today. Supposed to rain hard, so decided to hike to a shelter near the town and then figure a way to go for food. Before we could do that we had some great trail magic. We met these two very nice hikers, Sweet Tea and Mcguyver. Sweet Tea's husband is keeping up with her by car taking her to motels and meals. We came out at a road crossing today and they offered to take Cisco and me into Hampton Tn, a few miles away to get our supplied. It was terrific. We resupplied and then hiked on to our shelter for the evening, as it was going to rain. On the map the hike looked flat, but actually it went through this gorgeous ( no pun intended) gorge with a beautiful river and waterfall. But it was hard hiking over all the wet rocks and then a hard hike out of the gorge overore rocks! It is a wonderful place though- Laurel Falls- near Hampton Tn, worth a visit and very near the road . Went to bed on the shelter and syr enough around 12:30 am the rain started to fall and it rained all night. A side note, you may know that once upon a these mountains were covered in huge chestnut trees. But there was a blight and the big trees all disappeared by the 1950's. The blight only seems to get the tree when it's about 10 feet tall, so I have many baby chestnut trees, but as they grow, they die . It's a shame. Also, on the tree subject there are these huge trees that have blown over in storms and the root systems are about 15 feet high. It is strange to walk through the forest and pass by these giants toppled by the storms, many are right by the trail.