Date: 2015-05-06
From: R and R in Hot Springs

To: Spring Mountain Shelter
Miles today: 11.0
Weather: scattered clouds

Today it was hard starting to hike again after being off the trail for two days. Hot Springs is a great little town to rest up in because of all the "actual" amenities here. I ate a lot, got a haircut, a beard trim, resupplied my food, took several showers and did my laundry - all on the same day. I rested on the second day. Before I tell you about my hike today, let me relate to you something that happened to me at the hostel. First of all I stayed at Elmer's Sunnybank Inn, a 175 year old home built around the late 1800's. Everything in the house looked as if it were from the same period. My room was large and was appropriately furnished and had both a double bed and a single bed. Since I had arrived first in the morning, I chose the double bed. Why not? Anyway the first night my "room mate" was a hiker by the name of Concordia, an older mild-mannered gentleman who I had previously hiked with for several days in the Smokey's but had not seen in about a week. Well he left the next day. Sometime after lunch the caretaker found me and asked me if it would be ok to put another hiker in with me for the night again because he was sold out and the single bed in my room was vacant. I said, "Sure, why not. I asked what the hiker's name was and he said Frank." I made the appropriate assumption that Frank was a guy. "WRONG" When I returned that night to my room I found a very beautiful blonde hiker whose trail name was Frank, but whose real name was Kiki, a 20-something young married woman. Surprise, Surprise. Well no problem I said. And the night went by very appropriately. A couple of nights later I saw her again up the trail and told her just for fun(in front of others) that I sure enjoyed our night together at the last hostel. And she said she enjoyed our time sleeping together too! Well you can imagine that raised a few eyebrows around the picnic table. All hikers share shelter and tenting areas together night after night without inappropriate actions. It is just a matter of fact when you are hiking. Why would an in-town hostel be any different. Just like any city or population, there is sex, drugs, and rock and roll on the trail. But when you think how we smell after 4-5 days hiking, and how dirty we are, well you wonder how or why would people do that? UGH! Believe you me I'm not a part of that action. A side note: Kiki uses "Frank" as her trail name for security reasons.Ok back to the hike. As I said it was hard leaving town. I left about 8:00am I hiked up the mountainside to something called Lover's Leap. The trail was rocky, steep, and very cliff-like. There were several places where I really had to be very, very careful lest this old man take his own leap. I made it ok though. I climbed two more mountains that day. Fortunately, I still had no knee issues. Water was scarce throughout the day so I was really weighted down with liquid from town. Based on AWOL's book, it will be even more scarce tomorrow, being only available at the shelters. During the day I saw, hiked with or was passed by Chewy, Kamakazi, Buckle, Jason, Vanilla, Wildcat, Foxfire, Poledancer, Starstuff, Swayzee, Snacktime, and Big Sky. I had lunch at the bottom of Rich Mountain Lookout Tower but did not go up to it as it was 0.2 tenths of a mile away and I was too tired to walk it. I made it to the shelter area about 5:00pm.