Another fleece and mittens morning! Although it wasn’t quite as chilly as yesterday. We were hiking by 7:30 – Brown was too cold to wait for us and rocketed onto the trail to warm up. Today was much ridge walking in the forest. Tennessee knows how to do switchbacks at least (like Virginia, not like Maine and new Hampshire where everything was straight up and straight down!). We met quite a few section hikers on the trail today. Usual stops for water and lunch. In the afternoon, we hiked ip and over a fairly pointless mountain – 1200ft climb and no view, but it did have “dense spruce forest” according to our guide. It did, too – it smelled like Christmas and it was beautiful and quiet and peaceful up there.
We descended down from that and stopped around 6 at “beauty spot gap” – maybe our first night camping out of the trees on the whole trail. We had dinner in the evening sunshine then watched the sun go down over the Tennessee hills in the distance – it was mesmerizing. We took pictures but they don’t quite to do it justice. There is a sliver of moon out and we can even see some town lights twinkling in the distance.