Saturday April 6

I hope the outfitter in hot springs sells Salomon shoes..this flapping makes me paranoid...like I need help tripping over my own feet, especially when I'm tired, or there are roots, or rocks, or mud....ok all the time.
I hope I can get a smaller waist belt for my pack, too, a this one is cinched all the way down and is about 1 inch too big.....I'll just have to eat ice cream in town! Today we went 10.2 miles from brown gap to walnut mountain shelter.
Up,up,up,up for 1.5 hours...finally to max patch. A "bald" is just what it sounds like...no trees...gorgeous views, though! This is the first place if actually love to come back to and camp...I bet the night sky would be so amazing..a would the sunrise and sunset.
Streak and I stopped after the stair climb up to max patch and laid down to rest in the sun...eventually goat and zag showed up, we ate a bit of lunch then started on the 2ND half of our day. Aw started walking, we realized the trail actually meandered around the hill to the summit. We had stopped because it looked like only the pedestrian path went up there and that the AT just went around....look at that...the trail messing with us again..."ha ha...fooled you....again!" , it said. ..."every day", I say!
As we reached the summit there was a  bit of trail magic:I had a snow chilled natural light and a snicker bar...dessert of champions! I took an apple to go.
We hiked on to lemon gap where a had intended to cook and eat dinner as the thru hiker companion (one of the many guide books available) insinuated that walnut mtn shelter had a reputation for bear activity.
"Walnut Mountain Shelter (1938)—Sleeps 6. Privy. An old shelter, with a water source located down the blue-blazed trail to the left  of Rattlesnake Trail; difficult to locate, may be seasonal. The neighborhood bears show no fear of hikers, so be sure to use the bear cables if you decide to stay"

Sounds cozy and inviting, right? So we thought it best to cook and eat away from the area...only problem was, we weren't hungry. So we started discussing how big the"area"was.  Standing at lemon gap, we weren't very far from the shelter..how large is a bear's "area"? Were we any safer here than there? So we walked on to the shelter, keeping our eyes peeled for the inevitable bear. Walnut mountain shelter looked like the Ingall's cabin on "little house on the prarie". We each made the long trip to the water source then cooked and ate dinner on top of the hill...it was really nice and peaceful. It was bittersweet as it was our last supper as a group "out in the wild". A would arrive in hot springs tomorrow and silver streak was getting of the trail for a month or so...We had hoped to have a sunset dinner, but, alas, sunset is past hiker bedtime!