Cloud 9 Again

I am back at Cloud 9, hanging out with Crutch. Zero was here, he left this morning. I'm going to meet up with him in Franklin and we'll have a brief "trail marriage" through the Smokies. He can't get rid of me... hope I'm not annoying. Anyways, he should get to Franklin on Saturday, so I'm doing work-for-stay here until then, and then I will have to hike 10 miles over again from Winding Stair Gap to Wayah Bald, but it was a beautiful 10 miles so no complaints.

Crutch thinks I should change my trail name to "Boomerang" because no matter how hard you throw me, I always come back. I'll leave it up to you, my loyal readers. Vote with your comments.

In response to Patrick's question about the "rules". There are no rules, but everybody sets some rules for myself. My personal goal is to walk past every single white blaze, in order, walking north. I can "slack pack" (walk a section without my pack) but I have to start where I left of, or farther back. I can't jump ahead and hike south for a section, or anything like that. So far I've stuck with my rules, but it's a long trip and anything cna happen. Ultimately, it's about doing whatever it takes to get to Maine.

I did some research into exactly how cold it was on Sunday night. In Franklin and the surrounding towns, it was between 0 and 10 degrees F all night, with 30-40 mph winds and 60-70 mph gusts. Up on the mountains it is usually 10-15 degrees colder, so It was probably around -10. I was expecting 20 degree nights with temperatures occasionally dropping to the low teens, so this was way beyond what I was prepared for. I'm happy with my decision to bail for the time being, and now I get to hike with Zero, which is great.

So what I've been up to: Yesterday I got picked up by Laura (owner of Cloud 9) and Crutch. I ate all of crutch's food while he played chess with Zero, then Crutch Laura and I went out for chineese food (Zero was anti-social). We came back, and went over to Laura's for delicious homemade ice cream that we had picked up on the way back from Franklin. Laura bought 16 quarts of it! Zero came this time. Then we three hikers went back to cloud 9 for a game of Scrabble. I won, easily, but Zero had never played before. This morning Zero left. He took my tent so that he could be a little warmer for the freezing rain and snow that's supposed to come tomorrow. I had breakfast, then an hour later I had lunch. I did my work for stay duty, moving piles of logs from the forest down to the fire pit. Tomorrow Crutch and I will split it all. My hiker appettite has hit big time. Yesterday I had:

Breakfast around 9 AM: 2 Bacon Egg and Cheese biscuits at Hardees
Lunch around Noon: Bacon Cheeseburger at Hardees
Snacks at Cloud 9 between 3 and 5PM: 4 scrambled eggs with cheese, bagel with cream cheese, PB & J sandwhich.
Dinner at 5:30PM: 3 courses of Chineese food
Icecream back at cloud 9.

I went to bed hungry.