Nantahala Outdoor Center to Sassafras Gap Shelter

A plaque to a forest firefighter who died fighting a fire.

A snake we saw in the trail, just lying there. By the look of the size of his belly, he had just had a meal. Don't know what kind of snake he is, anyone want to tackle classifying it?!

This salamander was watching me as I was refilling my water bottle. He stayed there the entire time I filled my bottles, which took several minutes. He didn't seem to mind.

When Hope and I had breakfast this morning, an older gentleman stopped and talked to us. Come to find out, he was the founder of Nantahala Outdoor Center. This sign on the bridge commemorated him as the founder.

This morning started out slow with me not wanting to get out of bed. I decided I was going to stay and have breakfast with Hope, because I didn't know if I'd see her again on the trail. Hope went to church this morning, but I didn't. Instead I went for coffee and breakfast, did some planning and wrote in my journal. Hope got out of church and joined me for breakfast. While planning, we discussed the altitude change we were going to experience today and I decided instead of trying to push 16 miles, I would stay with her and do the 6.7 miles to Sassafeas Gap Shelter. Trust me, it was the BEST decision I could have made! NOC dropped down to about 1700ft in elevation, and today's climb was to over 4000ft. It was not an easy task. I felt as though I was going to run out of breath or energy in my legs before we completed the climb. But we made it to the shelter, tired and ready to relax some! I cooked a Lipton cup of soup and poured a package of au gratin potatoes into it for dinner and finished off some leftover potato chips I had from Franklin. It was a decent meal, all in all, though I think I'm going to be starved again by breakfast.

It is buggy here at this shelter, to the point that Hope and I both decided to out our tents up in the shelter to keep the bugs out. The shelter was (barely) large enough for is to both get our tents on the bottom level. 

I will tell you, the climb today was a little rough. The Jump Up really was a jump up and took a lot of energy to get over. You would climb higher and higher, look up as the trail went up and see blue sky lulling you into a sense that you ewww reaching the too. But, oh, how deceptive this mountain was! You would plateau out when you reached the blue sky area, but it was short lived before you were headed right back up again. When we did reach the top, finally, we both breathed a heavy sigh of relief!

Tomorrow I have to kick on some miles.  Two days from Fontana Dam, and I need to keep going.  Time is, after all, the fire in which we burn.