Longstride

CareFree and I had a lazy day in Tellico Plains, enjoying a museum, and re-planning and obtaining supplies for the next leg of our hike.

• We got up late and got breakfast from the lodge’s dining room.
• Then we went back to our room. I took a short nap while CareFree read was articles on her Kindle.
• We went through the guidebook again and re-planned our hike to Fontana Dam, taking into account where we’d start tomorrow, and that we wouldn’t be getting off of the trail another two days ahead to come back to Tellico Plains. It should be about a 4.5 day hike to Fontana, just south of the Smokies.
• We thought about getting our resupply for the Smokies in town and mailing it to the Fontana Lodge, thus allowing us to not have to worry about resupply there. But, by the time we’d had that idea, the Tellico Plains post office had already closed, making that idea moot.
• We walked back to town, and got lunch at Tellicafe.
• With nothing we needed to do in town besides get our resupply, we visited the Cherohala Skyway visitor center, and then walked next door to the Charles Hall Museum. The museum was originally created by Hall, a local historian and public servant, and houses a collection of historical and Appalachian artifacts. It’s a large and interesting collection of Cherokee artifacts, coins, stamps, World War II and military artifacts, guns, and antique cameras, typewriters, TVs, and radios, among others. The most interesting to me was a working automatic telephone exchange, where you could see how exactly a rotary-dial call was completed. The museum itself was fascinating, but suffered from a lack of space; with a bit more space and a little curation, they could have displays explaining the significance of more artifacts, helping to increase their impact.
• We got our resupply, as well as food to make a simple diner, so we wouldn’t have to walk back out to town to get food for tonight.
• Back at the lodge, we did laundry. CareFree found a tick at the bottom of the washing machine when it was done; it somehow managed to survive the wash cycle.
• We ate dinner.

My back is not at 100%, but it’s a lot better than it was the last couple of days, so I’m hoping that by morning, it’ll be good enough to hike with.

Tellico Plains