With apologies to Bill Bryson, the above seemed the best title for this page. 

We awoke to "fairy" music coming from the woods.  It was faint and ethereal.  We don't know where it came from, but it was a magical sound. 

The 4 day hike we had chosen began with a short shuttle via boat to Hazel Creek, on the North side of Fontana Lake, exorbitantly priced at $40 one way for the three of us.  Here is the view of the lake, en route.

The boat dropped us at the end of one of the lake's fingers, where Hazel Creek emptied out.  All of the walking this day was on broad, smooth, leaf-strewn former wagon roads.  This region was a populace place in the 1800s.  The town of Proctor once sat about both sides of Hazel Creek, in the picture below.  Proctor died off when the timber in this area was logged out -- most of the trees in this section of the Smokies are only 80 years or so old.

The walking was level and incredibly pleasant; shaded from the sun, we never got too hot.  Since we were walking in on a Sunday, we passed many people walking out -- 24 of them, to be precise.  We had heard that the Smokies were busy, but 24 coming out on an April weekend, early in the season, gave us some pause.  Even so, we were mostly entirely alone the entire 4 days.

After a short walk of 4.8 miles, we arrived at our backcountry campsite (#84, Sugar Fork, in case you care to look at a trail map) in the early afternoon.  Camping anywhere in the Smokies must be done only in campsites, and nowhere else -- GSMNP is rife with such rules.  The camp was entirely empty, but showed clear signs that many of those 24 folk who passed us earlier had camped there.  We set about setting up camp.  

At left, Jordan hangs our food.  At this campground there were lovely food-hanging cables all set up, so food-hanging was a snap (you can't really see the cables in the picture, but they are there).  This was really a treat, since hanging food could be a real pain if proper tree limbs cannot be found, which is usually the case.  During our first day of hiking in the Sierras last year with our dear friends the Engles, it took several of us nearly an hour to hang food, and was not completed until well after full dark -- when bears normally feed.  This caused us undue anxiety, which we were really happy to avoid while in the bear-infested Smokies.

Jordan is building the fire while I set up the stove in preparation for dinner.  There were no mosquitoes, but there were annoying little gnat-like insects (Bryson called them black flies) that hovered incessantly about our faces, occasionally flying directly into our eyes.  We found that they hated fires, so we kept a small 'Indian fire' going much of the time -- this did the trick nicely.

After camp was set up, the ladies enjoyed some Gin Rummy, using a conveniently flat rock as a card table.

While the ladies played cards, I read up on "Trees of the Smokies", and napped.  In the foreground is our clothesline.  We had all bathed and washed out our clothes (water temperature: AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!)

Dinner that night was extravagant -- Jambalaya.  We all ate ravenously.  It was exquisite.  Before full dark, we retired to bed to read aloud more of Bryson's book, with the 2 creeks roaring in the background.  I slept grandly; Jody did not -- she stayed awake much of the night, straining to hear bear-snuffling sounds that could not be heard above the water noise.   We had mixed feelings about a black bear encounter -- we really wanted to see one, but from a safe distance, with no cubs about, with the bear clearly utterly uninterested in us.  As bears are nocturnal, this was not likely; most bear encounters are at night.  And we definitely did not want to experience a bear at night, in our camp.