Mountains Under Foot

From Hazard’s notes:
Day 17: May 26, 2009
Travel:
From: Sunnybank Inn
To: ‘zero’ day!
People: Lots of people stayed overnight for a ‘zero’ day
Animals: Just Carter the house pooch and outdoor cats that like to play with the birds.
Money: $10 for lunch, $7 for an hour in the hot spring.
Notes of the day:
AM: Woke up and went down to the common room to wait for breakfast. Jenny was busy whipping up some great food. She came out and rang the food bell to let us know it was ready. Had granola with milk, melon, and some delicious muffins. We then sat around and digested and I caught up on some journal entries as the past few days we got into camp late and I just wanted to sleep. Went down to the public library to get a bunch of content uploaded on the blog and check emails. Jenny came in to use one of the computers and we found out she runs a business back home in Vermont with Chris called Wrenhouse, which you can look for the link on the sidebar.

PM: Library took a couple of hours so we came back to the house to sign up for dinner and headed back out for lunch. Spoon and I indulged in burger and chips at the sports bar while Cat had a modest ham and swiss sandwich. After lunch we walked down to the hot springs and payed $25 for all three of us to soak for an hour in the mineral water. It was super relaxing and felt great. So much so that we came back to the house and just laid around until dinner. Dinner was another great spread of food: Cauliflower in a beef broth soup, salad, quiche, and dessert was honey cake with ice cream. Fantastic! After a movie (“Religulous”) in the common room it was time to get to bed. Oh yea, I forgot to call my mom, guess it’s going to be a late night….

From Hazard’s notes:
Day 16: May 25, 2009
Travel:
From: Roaring Fork Shelter, NC
To: Hot Springs, NC (Sunnybank Inn)
Beginning: 8:00am
Ending: 3:45pm
Number if miles hiked:
a) Trail: 18
b) other
c) AT Mile Marker: 271.8 cumulative
Weather:
AM: Wet in the morning but didn’t care because we were headed to town. Remained misty on the mountaintops.
PM: Sun came out after noon, but right when we were 3 miles from town it just poured rain on us.
People: So many people stayed at Sunnybank Inn with us: Arthur, Matt, Loyal, Sal, Nikki and Joe, Centaur, and Needles.
Animals: Just people
Money: $0, $345 cumulative
Notes of the day:
AM:Power hiked the morning away.

PM: Stopped for lunch and guessed we had done 9 miles and had 9 more to go but then we came up on a road that meant we were only about 6 miles away. To make things more awesome we encountered our first bit of ‘trail magic’. Some ‘trail angel’ left a rubbermaid bin with plastic baggies of cool bottled water, crackers, a Snickers, and a hand wipe. We were just excited to not have to work for our water for once. Just after we passed the sign for the last shelter before town a flash rainstorm hit us hard. Rain poured for about a mile and soaked everything. My boots made a sloshy/suction noise that was not pleasant. Of course the sun came out right after and sent the humidity to 100%… We simply took our boots off when we hit the AT adorned sidewalk and walked down the street in camp shoes. Bumped into Arthur making a call at a pay phone and he told us we had walked right past the Sunnybank Inn. We turned around and found the place, which is this 160 year old Victorian house run by previous thru-hikers, and booked a room. After cleaning up and meeting up with Cat we headed to the diner for some well deserved pizza. Mmmmmmm.