Today should have been the beginning of the Smokies but it quickly evolved into an unintended zero day around Fontana Village. The power that was supposed to be back on between 6:30 and 7:30 yesterday was still not on when I woke up this morning. The original plan of getting back on the trail was based on the idea of having at least one awesome meal and getting clean, dry clothes. With the power still out it looked like that would be impossible and since there was no reliable ETA on the power I was still going to start hiking. Matt had to pick up a mail drop from the pos office which didn’t open until 11:30 – we were going to leave right after that, but while he was there the power came back on. The lodge had just put out a third free meal before the power came back, this time all you can eat bbq sandwiches. So now we had food and we could so laundry, but it was going to be nearly 2 before that was done and then we would be starting a big climb in the warm afternoon sun.
Sometime around the power coming back up we also found DJ, Sam, and Jess hanging around the lodge. They had spent the night at the nearby shelter and had already decided on taking a zero day at the village pool. I guess I should mention what this Fontana Village place is – its basically just a big resort/campground place. Theres the hotel style lodge and accompanying restaurant, then theres a general store, post office, ice cream shop, and laundromat. There are a bunch of cabins, a frisbee golf course, and a pool. All of this is located about a mile from Fontana Dam, the largest dam east of the Mississippi. The AT traverses the top of the dam itself. Anyway, the five of us ended up relaxing at the pool for most of the day. It was actually a pool and a lazy river section with tubes! Around 7 we got a shuttle from there back down to the Fontana Dam shelter on the trail and checked out the dam itself. Sadly after today i can no longer say I’ve hiked every mile of the trail. There’s a 1 mile piece between where the shuttle picked us up yesterday and where we got dropped off for the shelter today. That segment is actually under maintenance and being rerouted anyway so I have a good excuse.