April 24

Woke up at Fontana Village the next morning and Georgia Pine, Hustler & Brian were all gone :( The way of the trail I suppose. I'll stop here to note that Fontana Village was actually built in the 40s when construction of the dam began to house the workers. On our way into Fontana Village the night before we met a random group of folks from Alabama who Georgia Pine struck up a conversation with. Turns out they were "dam children." Their parents (well, fathers I s'pose) had been dam construction workers for the TVA and they had grown up together. They were back for a dam children reunion.

Aanyway. Got up. Couldn't even sleep in really. Took advantage of some lodge amenities (sauna). Got brunch in the main dining room (buffet!). Checked out of the room. Shipped Chad's pack with some other stuff in it back to DC at the post office down the hill. Hit up the general store briefly and then caught a shuttle back to the lake. I remember we were in the shuttle with Forest and Willow. Willow lives not too far from me now near Kent, CT. Then it was pretty much back to the marina for the day for another round of high life. It was beautiful out there. We had been trying to angle our way into a boat ride when Greenlite ran up the dock to help some people with their luggage that were heading for a houseboat. Next thing I know we're invited along to have lunch on their houseboat. They were all from Greenville, SC and kind of hilarious. Can't remember the details but I remember one guy particularly enjoying telling the story of his wife disembarking from a plane down those stairs onto the tarmac when she stumbled and took out one of the poor airline workers that tried to break her fall. She retaliated with some other absurd story about him I can't remember. I think it involved falling off a boat somehow. Aaaanyway they were so nice to us and we had quite the lunch.

We eventually got a boatride back to the marina where Greenlite's friends from Clemson were hanging out on the dock. We were probably there for 4 or 5 hrs or so when we finally decided to pack up and head towards the "Fontana Hilton" as the shelter near the dam is so named (apparently it has a shower). So we all started hiking the mile towards the dam and Greenlite and I decided we'd just keep going and head into the Smokies. It was pretty cool walking over the dam - I have a strange thing for the TVA. It just seems so old school, old America, New Deal, all that jazz. Thankfully the terrorist alert levels were low so we were allowed to walk across. I was maybe a third of the way across when two guys on motorcycles cruised by us. I started running after one of them, really wanted a ride across Fontana at sunset. He slowed down and I hopped on. Not one of my safest moments in life I suppose but oohhhhhhh was it nice. On the other side he slowed and I was able to hop off.

They kept on going but then turned around five minutes later or so and came back to see more of the dam. We got a few pictures with them. My ride was a nice man from Eastern KY named Jim. They were probably hitting up the tail of the dragon. He kept saying "I don't know why y'all want pictures with strangers but ooookay." So we pushed on from there and entered Great Smoky Mountain National Park. We hiked a mile or two in, gaining some elevation and we could look back down on the dam, glowing from lights as it got dark. So cool. Cowboy camped that night right off the trail. That was a good day.