Johnny Walker R.E.D.

The N.O.C. is a rafting heaven. If you want your kids to learn how to raft, they have a camp and this is the place to do it. Had breakfast and hit the trail. It is 7 miles straight up all the way to Sassafrass Shelter. It also fills up because by the time you get there everyone is toast!

Woke up early the next day and got on the trail. It is 22 miles to Fontana Dam and I want to get there in two days. The trail isn't friendly, but I shoot for the 12 miles my first day. Jacobs' Ladder just about does me in, but I make the 12 miles to Cody Gap. Three others do, too. Everyone is so tired that they can't even go for water. That night, at least a dozen owls, were screaming out their mating calls, and it echoed through the gap like a symphony. Two female hikers thought it sounded like the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz!

Up early and down to the water refill to wash my face and brush my teeth and call my wife to meet me in Fontana Dam and then hit the trail. 10 miles with tired sore feet and that is not just me -- it was all the hikers who came off the trail in Fontana. Everyone agreed the miles felt more like 15! No cell phone service at the Dam so trying to find out out to contact my wife. Catch a shuttle to the General Store and service isn't much better there. Finally get a text that wife got us a room at the lodge, where we get to at the same time just by luck. She looks wonderful and I look a mess! She likes my beard but wants to see her husband so into the shower, and beard goes down the drain. A good night's sleep and a zero day with her feels like heaven. Running around doing laundry, re-outfitting, my wife getting to meet my fellow hikers, I keep hearing the same thing, "Wow! Johnny! You clean up good!" We laugh a lot about it but I start wondering that I must look pretty bad up there. But it is good that my wife gets to see and meet all these wonderful people and it puts her mind to rest that I am not up here alone.

Quickly but deeply, I would like to touch on the mental aspect of hiking the AT. You have a LOT of time to think--way too much time sometimes. Meeting all these nice people sends your mind questioning what kind of person you are and when things happen at home, like a death in the family, all of those thoughts multiply ten-fold. You start wondering if this attempt, that you have been planning all your life, is really a selfish act. But with total reassurance and love from my family is the only reason I am going to press on.