More about the Great Smokies from Linda

Big Bare Hostel?  Had to look that one up.  Didn't know if it meant that it's just four walls a floor and roof - or if a nudist camp!  What I found in my A.T. guide book is the "Standing Bear Hostel."

Not sure if he stayed at Mollie's Ridge Shelter last week, but he would have past by it.  Legend says the area was named for a Cherokee maiden who froze to death looking for a lost hunter and that her ghost still haunts the

ridge.

Yesterday, he hiked through Charlie's Bunion.  It got its name on a hike in 1929, when Charlie Connor and Horace Kephart, an A.T. pioneer and famed writer/conservationist of the period, discovered the feature, created by a landslide after a disastrous rain that year.  The two decided that the rocky outcropping stuck out like a bunion on Charlies' foot.

The next section, between Davenport Gap and Roan Mountain (where we meet up on April 24) has lots of 360 degree panoramic views, coves, forests and balds.  So, David - more pictures, please!