May 29

Swimmin' hole

Slims got an early start today and he hikes pretty fast anyway, so he got out in front of the rest of us early on.  We were all kind of hiking at our own paces today, not really in a cohesive group.  Four miles in, we took a morning break at Boblets Gap shelter for water, snacks, and privy stop.  The privy there was really nice.  New, clean (for a privy), sky lights, hand railings.  Nice, easy hiking all day today.  Around the Cove Mountain area, I spotted a few ripe wild blueberries.  What a nice treat. I can't wait for more berries to be out.  We ate lunch at Cove Mountain shelter.  Slims had left a not for us saying he was there a couple hours ago, and was stopping for lunch at the swimming hole at Jennings Creek.  We caught back up with him at the creek and we stopped at the swimming hole for an afternoon break.  I went for a swim.  When Tink, Apache, and I were in the water, a guy along the shore shouted to us that there was a snake swimming near us.  We scurried out of the water, waited for it to pass, and got back in.  After that relaxing break, we had a climb up Fork Mountain.  It was pretty easy though.  Funny how in the book, the elevation profile can look tough, but when you hike it, it's not that bad.  It works the other way too, more often that way I think.  It's all about the terrain, and how well the trail is graded, and there's no way to tell ahead of time from the info in the guidebooks.  We made it to a campsite just short of Bryant Ridge shelter.  It was a nice two story shelter.  Slims had gotten ahead and scoped it out.  But we decided to tent since the crowd up there at the shelter seemed older, and we didn't want to make a lot of noise.  As soon as we got our tents up around 6pm, the woods got really dark.  Weird.  The sun doesn't set for hours.  A freak isolated thunderstorm rolled in and soaked us.  We had a nice fire going anyway.  It rained off and on all night.

Swimming at Jennings Creek