Date: 2003-04-20
From: Brown Hog Creek Shelter

To: Hot Springs North Carolina
Miles today: 13.0
Weather: broken clouds

Easter Sunday. From Walnut Mountain Shelter to Hot Springs North Carolina. 13 miles. I had diarrhea all day. I had to stop like 6 times. I almost ran out of toilet paper and that was part of what was slowing me down. About 20 minutes and a mile out of Hot Springs, here¢s Eddy, hiking back up. He¢d gone to the car, taken his pack off and went off and got Corona¢s and was waiting for me. He got tired of waiting so he hiked back up a mile to meet me. We hiked back down to the truck at Trail Head there at Hot Springs. Someone had hung up their boots. Apparently, just got fed up and hung up their boots on the sign and left them there. So the first thing we did was go to the outfitters at Hot Springs and buy a new fanny pack. We went directly from there to the Smoky Mountain Diner. It's a little caf© and I ate a 16oz sirloin. Which was actually 2 ¢ 8oz but they called it a 16oz. Then back to the outfitters where you had to check in. I ended up checking into the Cody house which is a sweet little place. A little tiny house. Had one bedroom, a little living room and a little kitchen and the people had converted it during hiker season to this place where the 8 people could sleep in it. There were 2 double beds in the bedroom and they had converted the living room into 4 little wooden bunks. This is where Spiderman was hanging out and Peppermint Patty. A son and mother combination. She was about in her 60¢s I guess. Really nice people. Apparently, she had decided to hike the trail and he was coming with her. Eddy had decided he was staying overnight but he didn¢t want to pay for the hostel so he parked the car, as he normally does (he¢s used to sleeping in it), he parked his vehicle out in front of the house there hoping they wouldn¢t tell him to move. They never did. He used my sleeping mattress and stuck it in the back and slept out there overnight. We walked around quite a bit and checked out the food places. We went and took a look at the ? Hostel which has quite a reputation and justifiably so. When we came up to it , it was this really nice southern Victorian type of house. You looked in the front window and it was like looking back into the 1920¢s. The house was full of antiques. All over the place. Everywhere. The bedrooms all had beds in them. They all had bathrooms in them and the people who were staying there, basically got their own bedroom and their own bathrooms. They also had a music room downstairs with a piano, a banjo, a guitar, all kinds of stuff. People were sitting there playing them as we walked through. I did see Mr. Ed there and the other George. He had been staying. We talked to other hikers who said Hot Springs had been a mob scene that weekend. Mainly because it was Easter and a lot of the hikers decided to hike into Hot Springs or stay over because of Easter. Take the holiday in town. I knew there were several hikers who were hiking there, trying to make it there because they wanted to have a place to go to church on Easter Sunday. Estimates were 400-500 hikers in Hot Springs. I don¢t even think Hot Springs had a population that big. All the hostels, hotels, campgrounds were full. There were people sleeping on other peoples porches and all kinds of stuff. Sounds like a blast.