5/6/12 – 359 miles
It was a nice walk from Erwin to the evening campsite. The mountains were still pretty serious but the trail was graded well and the weather was perfect. We ate lunch on top of a bald (a mountain meadow) called Beauty Spot that had views in all directions.
There are a lot of foreigners doing the trail this year. On top of Beauty Spot we were joined by Metric and Sticks, a guy from Australia and his girlfriend, and Knife, a guy from Switzerland. The biggest group of hikers from another country are the Germans. There was a documentary film about the AT, made by a German company and widely shown all over Europe that pricked the interest of a few hearty souls to come over and try it.
We spent the night at Cherry Gap Shelter after 17.5 miles