New heights

Exciting things have been happening in the past few days! I'll start with yesterday. We woke up to the kind of chilly weather that makes you want to stay huddled in your sleeping bag and not force your sore body out to start another day. The day before it had rained all day so we struggled into our wet shoes and socks and got hiking as quickly as possible to warm up. We hiked three miles and then reached clingmans dome, the highest point we will reach on the A.T.  At 6,643 elevation we had quite the view. After celebrating this milestone in our hike we walked down .5 miles to a parking lot to hitch a ride into Gatlinburg to load up on food. Since it was still fairly early in the morning, and not many people were out and about it took about 30 min to get a ride. The two gentleman that picked is up were very nice and took us into town and waited for us to shop and then actually took us half way back as well. ( they were planning on doing some hiking in the area) We were then able to hitch another ride the rest of the way back. This time we were picked up by a guy who thru hiked several years ago; so it was fun talking to him about the trail! By the time we got back to the trail it was already 1:00 so we quickly began hiking again and were able to make about 11 more miles before we arrived at an extremely full shelter area. In the smokies you are required to stay in a shelter, and if the shelter is full, camp around it. When we got there, there were already between 10 and15 tents set up and at first we thought we might have to hike another 7 miles to the next shelter. Luckily we were able to squeeze our tent into the cramped mass of tents. It was very sloped so it made sleeping pretty interesting :) this morning (Thursday) we once again woke up to chilly weather. We reluctantly pulled ourselves out of our sleeping bags and were on our way by about 8. The hike today was fairly easy. A few uphills but a lot of downs and flats. Our exciting piece of news is that we made it 20 miles today!! Despite having sore feet and backs by the end, the day seemed to move right along and we're both glad we got in the extra miles! 

Now I (Zae) would like to take some time to share a few things that I have been learning while on the trail. Now obviously I have a lot of time on my hands since were  walking all day:) Iv been trying to get in the habit of praying about different things as I walk and today I listened to a sermon. ( great idea Lisa ) Through these things God has been showing me lots of areas in my life that could use work. An example would be patience :) I am finding that I am not a very patient person, and God has been giving me plenty of opportunities to work on this, such as walking all day in the rain, or better yet setting up our tent in the rain :) Although I don't really like realizing how impatient or selfish I can be a lot of the time I am so glad that God has been helping me work on  these areas, and others. God has also been showing me His majesty and glory through all the things we have been able to see! God is so awesome and I'm excited for all the things that He will continue to teach me! 

- Zae