Date: 2014-04-09
From: Greasy Creek Gap

To: Greasy Creek Gap
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: scattered clouds

Greasy Creek GapI ended up zeroing for a day at the hostel at Greasy Creek Gap. The two days I had put in in the new shoes were beginning to take their toll and I realized it was time to start listening a little better to my body. Now, it's a bit difficult to truly capture my stay at the "friendly," as the proprietor insists we call it (perhaps hostel is too close to hostile for her liking). The place and the people I met within it were eccentric to an extreme. And that's saying a lot on a trail which seems to cater to eccentrics.To begin with the place is HARD to find. It's not located at a road crossing, so you have to take a leap of faith and just start following an unmarked, poorly maintained side trail as it winds itself halfway down a mountain. When I looked a little more carefully I found sticks on the ground that had been fashioned into an "h" with another stick arrow setting beside it, pointing downwards. It's a haul down there. On a side note: hikers are some of the most lazy people you will ever meet off the trail. They may be willing to push a 25 mile day in hail, but ask the same person to travel .2 miles off the trail to get water and it's a recipe for both snark and immobility. Unless effort is rewarded in trail miles hikers will rarely move beyond either the trail or the closest local bar. Anyway, .8 miles down a steep hill later I found myself in a rundown kitchen being handed a 8x11 sheet of paper of house rules and being asked to remove my shoes and wash my hands before I did anything else. This in itself is quite common. Hikers are pretty gross critters. However, usually with this level of fastidiousness there is an equal level of cleanliness and order in the establishment. Not so here. The place was a bit of a shambles. The shower was out of order the entire time I was there (which destroyed half the reason I decided to hike down), the kitchen was a clutter of odds and ends (she stores plastic bags and hidden grocery items in her oven) and only half on limits, and items from different ongoing projects seemed to litter the corners of every room. Pets, also, seemed to be draped over everything. Enormous cats eyed me from their resting places (aka anywhere that I might possibly wish to sit) and an over friendly, very smelly dog continually rolled at my feet begging me to scratch its matted belly fur. Animal hair clung in tufts to most surfaces. Granted the place was her home as much as a hostel, but it was curious all the same. Despite the initial chaos I was welcomed in as family and I was so thankful to have my shoes off and my sleeping bag airing out I could have kissed the ground. But then I met City Slicka'. The dude is old school hiker trash. He claims to be a previous through hiker, the inventor of something that was bought by NASA and used on the Mars Rover, a Triple Crowner (hiked the AT, PCT and CDT), independently wealthy, a graduate of a renowned masters program for Chemical engineering, and a while slew of other things. It would seem that he hasn't had a job in a while. He claims to have been on one trail or another for the last five years. He's rocking one of the most impressive mullet/mohawks I've ever seen and maintains a pervasive odor of marijuana. He's always smoking. And drinking. He also never shuts up. When I got to the hostel he had already been there for two and a half days and when I left he looked like he was setting up camp for a continued extended stay. I had to share a bunk room with him for a night. Alone. I was wigged. Plus in the middle of the night I awoke to a slow creaking in the door and then a soft pressure on the edge of my mattress. I sat bolt upright and yelled, "What the hell?" Off to my right I heard City's mumbled voice... Which didn't quite make sense to my sleepy brain, but I was convinced he was trying to get into bed with me. When I finally got my hands on my headlamp and got it on to shine at my feet all I found was one of the enormous cats staring straight at me as he kneaded his claws into my down sleeping bag. I sheepishly turned off the light and resisted the urge to reach down and throttle the thing. On my day off I hitched a ride into the booming metropolis and found myself an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet where I ate my heart out. A massive food coma followed. I could hardly move. I slept in the car the whole way home. Once back I went to work trying to get the shower back into working order. The doors had been taken off and half the caulking had been stripped from the bottom, so I set up the caulking gun, stripped the remainder of the blackened, rotting caulk out crevices and recaulked the gap between the plastic wall boarding and the tub and around the edges of all the rickety fixtures. I also reattached and caulked around the edges of the metal door slides. Oy! I am so thankful that I have a set of handy fellows in my family who taught me to do a few household tasks. When I finished up I was ridiculously proud of my handiwork.The owner was apparently appreciative too. She knocked $7 off my stay... Minimum wage for and hour's work. That second night we had some more hikers come in. Most of them were good folk. Unobtrusive and good natured. All but one. I shall refer to her a Yakkity Yak. Now Yakkity Yak is not a bad lady. She, like everyone else out here is trying to hike her own hike and she's doing it in the way that is most comfortable for her. In this case it includes a bit of yellow blazing past uncomfortable bits of the trail... The Smokies, say. Also, as my moniker for her would propose, she is a talker. She is also a bit high strung. The morning that I left she couldn't find her long sleeve wool shirt that had been washed in a large group load. After a loud and extended search, which included going through multiple people's lacks (mine included), she announced that she thought that the owner had stolen it for herself. It was a big to-do which left the owner almost in tears. It would have been rather funny except for the extreme discomfort of the whole situation.Someone else ended up finding the shirt stuck to their pant leg, both articles still staticky from the dryer. Instead of accepting the shirt with grace an thanksgiving Yakkity Yak claimed that the owner had planted the short there. That's about the point I left. .8 back to the trail and boy was I glad to be back!Side note:I want to make a blanket apology for the many misspellings and typos in all of my entries. I type everything with my thumbs on my phone and between my own incompetences and autocorrect... And a restricted ability to edit my work there have been a few shudder-worthy misprints. Dain for deign and out for put have been my particular favorites upon rereads. Yikes. My apologies. I am trying to catch things, but I beg your pardon.