Happy Mother's Day - May 11 and 12

Randomly along the trail you can stumble across old tombstones and the remains of old buildings. Today was no different. The trail found its way through farmers fields and at the edges of the fields there were old chimneys standing alone and there were a couple grave sites from the early 1900s. I find the grave sites the most interesting because depending on the local you talk to you can get quite the story about the people who use to live there and how the government came to acquire the land for the trail.
Today The terrain was quite undulating, providing me with a couple 1500 foot climbs. At the top of one climb I followed the ridge line for about five miles. The ridge had these interesting rock structures on top of it. There must have been about thirty of them. Most of them had collapsed with the weight of time but some of them stood strong; standing in a circular construction with the centre filled in with rocks. I can only guess what purpose they held and everyone that I talked to was as perplexed as I was. The best suggestion was that at one time they were hollow in the middle and were used during a war to ambush the opposing soldiers while providing protection... Who knows??
The trail also passed by a memorial for the most decorated American soldier of world war II. The soldiers name was Audie Murphy and earned 24 decorations including three Purple Hearts. He died close to the site of the memorial in 1971 in a plane crash.
That night I ended up out running another thunderstorm. However, I was able to reach my destination in time and find refuge in my tent! Another success day of keeping my feet dry!

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!!!!!
Today was a day full of interesting sites. One of which I have been looking forward to since I decided to hike the trail. The first one that I came across was Dragons Tooth. Dragons tooth is a stone monolith on the side of a mountain. It provided me with boundless entertainment as I scrambled along its surface. It turned out to be the perfect spot for an early morning snack as it had excellent views of the valley below. The trick was following the trail down off of dragons tooth. This was the most "technical" section of the trail I had crossed yet; requiring the use of both hands to help lower myself down over the rock. In some places they installed mental rods to provide foot placements/hand holds.
Once further along the trail I decided to reward my body with real food. I hadn't had a real meal in quite a while and there was a family style all you can eat restaurant about a mile off the trail. On my way there I met Finder and Sugarbombs. We decided to get a table together. However, we were not prepared for what we saw once we arrived. We had all remembered that today was Mother's Day but we never thought that would influence our ability to get a home cooked meal. Man were we wrong! We arrived to a 2.5hr wait for a table (there were A LOT of hungry families there). The place was absolutely packed! Luck was on our side and a hiker had arrived about an hour ahead of us and we were able to join him and as a result we only waited an hour :). The meal was a typical southern meal: deep fried chicken, ham, mashed potatoes, beans, green beans, gravy, etc. and BISCUITS!!! The biscuits were amazing! I probably ate at least six of them. After eating as much as we possibly could we waddled back to the trail and hiked the last four miles to McAfee knob. This is the place I had been waiting to see. I will try to post pictures of it. Basically it is a piece of rock that juts out into space off the top of a mountain and below it is about 1000' of air. It's a truly beautiful place. You can actually sit on the edge of the rock and let your feet dangle with nothing but open air below them. I took some photos with the classic yoga poses and watched the sun retire for the evening. It was a great way to end the day.

Total miles: 708
Total days: 46