Date: 2004-05-17
From: Roaring Fork Shelter

To: Elmer's Sunnybank Inn - Hot Springs, NC
Miles today: 14.9
Weather: light rain

Honestly, my memories of the trail on the 17th are vague until Hot Springs. It must have been Road Head Fever. The mind focuses on food and ice cream and showers and beds and people to call and todo lists and stuff to get. Everything else is put on auto pilot. Even the camera stayed stashed which doesn't help with the memory thing. So, for sure, we got up here at Roaring Fork Shelter. Yours truly was the last to get on the trail. I didn't see Adam again till Hot Springs.The trial emerged from the forest into a little parking lot with a sign and a plaque on a rock. The area was all grass lawns and big old trees. After crossing a road it descended a bit more through some woods behind some houses and came out on Bridge Street, the main drag in Hot Springs. That last section between the two roads isn¢t hiked so much as evidenced by the brush encroaching on the trail. From Standing Bear I had called ahead to ¢Elmer¢s¢ Sunnybank Inn and told them Adam & I would be staying and eating. This is one of those famous places on the trail. Other hikers had recommended it. Apparently ¢Elmer¢s¢ is so popular that it often gets booked up full. Walking into town it was sort of amazing to see that every other place was a church. Cleverly, I walked right past Elmer¢s and stopped at the convenience store/arcade/laundromat to consult the map in the Companion. It was back about 40 feet. Adam passed me on my way back as he was heading to the post office.Elmer¢s was a big traditional old white house sitting up on the hill side. There were porches on the front, both downstairs and upstairs. The back porch, the main hiker entrance, was stacked with hiker mail drop boxes and lined with boots. A sign on the screen door to the kitchen told hikers to leave boots outside. The kitchen was bustling with dinner preparations. It reminded me of an AMC hut kitchen in the kind of folks doing the cooking, the age and style of the stove & stuff, and the scale of the pots & pans. There was a chalk board with a list of names for dinner. Our names were on it. There was a desk cluttered with papers and a list of guests for the night. I made a note that we were here but there was no one here at the moment to actually check in with.This place was amazing. It was furnished in antiques everywhere as if it were a museum but comfortably lived in. It was an unlikely place to house a bunch of dirty hikers to say the least but it was wonderful. Certainly few could appreciate it as much as the likes of us. Downstairs there were a couple of bed rooms, a study, a sitting room, a music room and a couple of dining rooms in addition to the kitchen and bathroom. Upstairs there were more bed rooms and a little library. The foyer, a full two stories tall, included a curved stairway. It was such a cool place. Adam & I landed in a front corner room upstairs. It was mighty fine. After dropping off my gear it was time to visit the grocery store and the gear shop. The grocery store was a bit of a disappointment. Fortunately, the town of Erwin was only 3 nights away and there was still a fair amount of food in my pack from my last resupply. It was still distressing.This was supposed to be a serious trail town, at least in my mind.The outfitter in town was a much more pleasing scene. In fact they had a fair supply of food. Everything would be fine. Hey, they even had the Wingfoot book, The Thru-Hikers Handbook. This was a must buy. While strolling about the gear shop it occurred to me that there might be a solar panel waiting for me here. When I asked the guy at the front he said hold on and disappeared to the back of the store. It was a while but he returned with a package. Cool. The good folks at Aurora Solar had sent me a replacement and here it was waiting for me in Hot Springs, NC. Wow. At the checkout there was a sort of zip lock wallet. It looked lighter and more sensible than my wallet so I bought it. It turned out to be handy for cards and stuff but not so good for cash. A rubber band found on the trail a few weeks later helped considerably to hold bills in this new wallet.Back at Elmer¢s on the second story porch just outside our room the new solar charger got put to work. It was a pleasant sunny late afternoon. The old charger was packed away in a postpaid box that came with the new one. The new Thru-Hiker's Handbook got updated with info written in the old Data Book. A school bus showed up and dropped off a kid who walked up the road beside Elmer's. Bud had shown up and was reading on the first floor porch. Just before dinner, around 7pm, another surprise was the arrival of Alexandre. The last time we met was at Newfound Gap just past Clingman's Dome. He had a tough time just climbing the stairs. He was still fighting some aches and pains but determined not to quit and still happy somehow.Dinner was quite an event. Elmer also runs an organic farm a few miles out of town. All the meals here are vegetarian. Tonight¢s dinner started with fresh baked bread and a huge pot of asparagus soup. Then the rest of the food came out. We all sat around a big rectangular table. There were more than a dozen of us. Elmer said we each had to name our favorite vegetable and explain why. He started and the cook for the night was next. The cook, who had been a thru-hiker last summer, kept correcting us for choosing foods that weren¢t technically vegetables. It got to be kind of funny. No one really cared and it certainly spurred conversation. It was clear that Elmer had been at this for a long time, decades in fact and that he truly enjoyed having all these strange folks drifting in and out of his life.After dinner a small bunch of us hung out in the sitting room and talked. Fewer than half the people here tonight were thru-hikers and many weren¢t hikers at all. Last weekend the place had been booked for some sort of religious retreat. There were still a few folks here from that event. Some of the folks were just tourists. There were lots of questions about the trail but there was a fair amount of other discussion too. This was certainly a different experience from any of the last 2 weeks.Wow. It¢s been two weeks, 16 days to be precise, if you include the approach day, and 270 miles. That was amazing. It¢s been hard to reconcile that first day. What do you do with 8.8 miles before the AT started. Does the 2.5 miles hiked that first day to the second shelter even count. After all, you have to calculate that average from time to time. At this point though, it all becomes pretty inconsequential. Do the math and stop quibbling about the decimals.It was nice to talk with folks in this warm comfortable place but sleep was of paramount importance to this hiker. Both Bud and Alexandre were planning on a zero day tomorrow and maybe a soak in the hot spring. Adam had gotten hold of his dad and was being picked up late tomorrow. He claimed that he didn¢t want to risk missing the opportunity to return to the job he¢d had last summer but in my opinion it was a certain woman who kept sending him care packages and letters on the trail that lured him off the trail. They had met just a week before he left for the trail. She had been on his mind much of the time on the trail. There must have been something compelling in the letter or package he got from her at Elmer's. He had always said he could spend a month on the trail before his boss got back and his job would be at risk. It's been just over 2 weeks. Hopefully leaving the trail was worth it.Surely Adam's company on the trail would be missed but he had to do what he had to do. Right now, it was time to put an end to this pleasant 14.9 mile town day.