The hike from Wesser Bald to NOC was pretty, and good trail. It's too bad NOC is at the end of it—makes it harder to stop and enjoy the scenery. The trail was mostly on ridgetops, so it was in parts steep and rocky like Albert Mountain trail, and like that trail, would pop out onto rocky promotories for vistas. Today was clear so the views were great. Finally! And it seems like today that most of the trees have popped out their leaves, so there was leaf-green everywhere, and flowers, too, that I have not seen on the trail before. Don't know if it's the valley or the march of the seasons.
I reached the NOC sometime between 10 an 11am. It's a big sporting complex like they have on the American River. I have showered, put my stuff in the bunkhouse, eaten a big lunch—salad!—seen a cardinal, flowering dogwood and eastern redbud, chatted with Gnome, Bloody Stump, Khaos, Madman, T, Dutch, Achilles, Stump, Jamie, Hard Time, Jeremy—ooh, just saw what looked like a little blue kingfisher fly down river!—and others. Gnome and Liverwurst are bunking with me tonight in Tsali #2. Happy to be going home, but also wishing I was making the climb tomorrow up the hill to Fontana Dam with everyone else. After dropping my fuel, moleskin, tuna and noodles in the hiker box and signing the register, I headed toward a riverside bench to write this when I heard behind me, "Hey, San Francisco!" It was Hemlock and his buddy, whom I met briefly in Hiawassee outside the P.O. (I asked them if that's where they were camping as their maildrop was strewn about them on the lawn.) Hemlock is from Sausalito. When I was eating my nachos deluxe and side salad and chatting with Gnome, we looked out the window and saw some old buy posing with Liverwurst and Miles while the man's wife took a picture. I see Stump across the wate soaking her feet -- I'm going to join her. Okay, now we're both writing in our journals. Stump, if I haven't explained, asked her son to thru-hike with her, and he agreed. Jamie and I think they're probably the only mother-son team on the trail. Stump is a real sweet woman. I've given my e-mail and phone number to a couple of people this trip: T, since he gave me my trail name; Packman, because we hit it off so well; Gnome, too -- maybe his trail name should've been SuperDad. He does love his kids and grandkids. Feels good to soak my feet in the river. Stump just compared the feeling of these town days to Christmas; I said it feels a little like homecoming. It's supposed to rain and thunder sometime tonight, stump and I are feeling little drops now (2:40p). I may have to take this into the community room by the bunkhouses. And, even though I'm stuffed, I can't stop thinking about vanilla shakes, or maybe ice cream floats. Man.
I have had a Cherry Garcia bar -- no milkshakes here -- and again am sitting by the river. Rain still has not started in earnest. T and Dutch hitchhiked into town -- I stayed to eat -- and I'm watching kayakers and rafters drift by. Finally met Archon, too, all in khaki and looking like he should be on safari, not hiking in North Carolina.
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