5/4: Unnamed Stream to Pat Jennings Visitor Center

• 

• 

• Miles 527.4-534.3 (6.9 mi.)
• Total ascent: 1814’; descent: 1198’

Long-distance hiking involves a number of inevitabilities. It’s possible to mitigate heat, bug bites, foot pain, and the like, but it’s impossible to opt out of them altogether.

When I initially sat down to write this post, I was feeling sour about two such inevitabilities: hiking in the rain, and waiting for a late shuttle. Struggling to follow that thread anywhere interesting, I locked my phone, brushed my teeth, and went to bed.

Looking back at my sour grapes the following day, I can find sweet things: Rachel and I managed to get our tent put up before anything more menacing than a sprinkle showed up. Her raincoat’s mouse-chew patches, which we worried wouldn’t stick because of their small sizes and varying shapes, held fast. We were covered by rhododendron, maple, and hemlock leaves, a la the famed “green tunnel,” for the worst of the rain. 

The rain paused a few times, the longest such session Rachel and I spent talking to someone we discovered to be a lot like us: Good Wolf, an early-30s professional looking for something fresh. Good Wolf lives frugally but well, in our estimation, and wants to try his hand at laser etching and design when he finishes the trail. 

When we did reach our destination, the Pat Jennings Visitor Center, we found a covered bench to wait on for the hour-plus until the shuttle arrived. The shuttle took us — for free, thanks to city subsidies intended to attract hikers — to the Travel Inn, where we stayed last night. 

The Travel Inn must be so named because it encourages guests to keep on traveling. Our room’s walls are stained by tobacco smoke, its lamps bulbless, and its window cracked; but most importantly, it’s the only place in town with laundry. 

After laying out our wet gear, our first task in any roofed home for a night, we made a beeline for the Mexican restaurant. The beans, to our surprise, were much spicier than any restaurant dish we’ve eaten up to this point on the trail. 

Near the end of our enchiladas, our favorite leapfrogs walked in: Cindy and Suzanne. They’d been in town since 10:30 this morning, they told us, having camped unbeknownst to us a mile or so closer to the visitor center than we did. They also reported that Walmart didn’t have stove fuel, rousing our fear of the shortage we’d heard about but didn’t experience in Tennessee.

After eating, we made our way a block west to the shopping plaza in order to resupply. The Walmart, a Neighborhood-Market-plus establishment, had the white, polyester, long-sleeved shirt Rachel had been hunting for. It also had, at decent prices, sunscreen, bedsheets for warm-weather sleeping, and eyemasks.

For our food resupply, we walked nextdoor to Food City, which was, as we suspected, slightly more expensive on the non-perishables we were shopping for. But we had a better shopping experience and avoided giving additional money to Walmart, which we’ll be doing plenty of on this trip. 

Our most exciting and final task, aside from the petty chore of cleaning our clothes in the Travel Inn’s laundry machines, was to get dinner. We decided before leaving Food City to check whether the Little Caesar’s was open; if it was (and it was), to carry out a large pizza. 

The Little Caesar’s was filling if not gourmet, and the hotel’s laundry machines were serviceable if not great at removing stains and smells. We discovered an hour or so later that the bed was sleepable if not comfortable. 

The lesson of today, to me, is that perspective is reality. Was waiting beside the highway in a drizzle for a shuttle the worst part of today? Maybe, but perhaps the best part was that relief I felt when I boarded a roofed vehicle destined for a place where scraps of paper could be traded on demand for hot, fresh food. 

Key to the success and enjoyment of any adventure (and, I’ll hazard, marriage) is a durable but not blind eye on the bright spots. That alone would be a wonderful thing to take from the AT.