Wednesday I slept ok despite a slightly uneven surface. Waited all night to have to get up and put up the rain cover but there never was even a hint of rain. I got up around 5 and got going again around 6:30 and it has just begun to mist and then soon after drizzling off and on. I wound my way through the hilly forest and soon on into the town of Cherokee at a 4 lane highway. I had gotten there too early for the supermarket and the DG so I kept going for a gas station I spied, and it began to pour. The gas station was no longer open as it had been converted into a tire shop. But they still had a nice roof under which I waited out the rain and took the opportunity to rearrange my gear a bit. It stopped quickly and I decided to just wait at the DG for it to open as it was only a few minutes. I rolled on and then to a long road that led right beside the Tennessee River at Pickwick Lake. Really enjoyed this part. It was entirely paved but after the first few miles there was basically no traffic. I came back to the trace and spent a bit of time relaxing at the little park by the lake to kill time. I set my sights on a relatively short day to Collinwood to hopefully be as safe a bikepacker as I could considering there was severe weather including tornadoes this evening. I found a park with baseball fields and figured a concrete dugout would be good to spend the night and wait out the storms. I wound my way up and down the hollows and today I could really finally tell that the efforts of the past five days has caught up with me and I was intensely sore and pretty tired. Still I was in good spirits and had a good day. It was another hot and humid one despite high rain chances. As I got closer to Collinwood it cooled off a lot because the line of strong storms was just barely north of here.