Date: 2006-05-05
From: Dennis Cove (Kincora Hostel)

To: Dennis Cove (Kincora Hostel)
Miles today: 0.0

Last night was interesting enough sleeping under a picnic table but to top it off there was someone up every 30 minutes going to the restroom. That normally wouldn¢t be a problem if sleeping in a hotel on a business trip with individual rooms, but that wasn¢t the case. Here you have an open bunkroom that leads down a creaking set of wooden steps to the main floor. From here across the hardwood floor which is very difficult to walk on with sore, tired feet in the dark to the exterior door that leads you down two more steps out to the front porch. You then have to pass door #1 on the left and through door # 2 on the left to enter the restroom. The door is made of rough sawn lumber so if situated just right the light from inside the restroom will creep out of the cracks and shine onto the porch where of course we were trying to sleep. If I had known about this problem earlier in the day I would have snatched the sleeping mask and earplugs that the H-Bomb has been carrying from the start. That would have been my only hope for a good night¢s sleep. With this said it gets us to daybreak were we started moving extra early because the same old guys that roamed around all night were already congregating to start the day. Since we were sleeping under the picnic table where they were gathering it was definitely time to get up. Shortly after getting up and packing our sleeping bag it started to rain. We had planned to get an early start on the trail, but the rain delayed us for a while. We sat around and enjoyed the company of everyone in hopes to see it stop. There isn¢t any problem walking in the rain but if you can stay dry I highly advise it. There is nothing like wet boots and wet cloths to hike in. As the morning went by our plans to make it to Watauga Lake Shelter tonight diminished because of the continuing rain. To make things easy we just decided to take a zero day and enjoy Kincora one more night. See here at Kincora Bob and Pat have turned part of their house into a hostel and what a great hostel it is. There are multiple pictures and notes from fellow hikers that date back for many years that cover the walls. It was here that I found a picture of my friends Motor¢n and Free Hill that thru hiked in ¢05¢. Also there are bunks all upstairs to lounge around on and a full kitchen down stairs to use. Bob operates the hostel on a donation basis but please don¢t take advantage of this privilege. He actually pays for a lot of the expenses to operate the place out of his own pocket so help out if you get a chance. Later in the evening as more hikers showed up we all took another trip into town to re-supply and to grab another warm bite to eat. When we got back to Kincora I settled down in the little bedroom downstairs. This room was great and made up for sleeping on the porch last night because it was a single bedroom which meant no snoring and the bed had a warm quilt with soft pillows. I got settled into my room and by this time it was starting to get dark outside. The rain continued so we all gathered on the porch for some games and a good times. Usually not hard to do when you have a bunch of hikes! Later, I started missing Shasta and H-bomb and couldn¢t find them anywhere. I ended up finding them pilled up in my bed in the little room. They wanted to escape some of the excitement to give them and chance to do some journaling and to give H-Bomb a chance to write Charles¢¦ Tonight at Kincora: Blue Bird, H-Bomb, Shasta, Ranger Dawg, Model-T, Bob, Pat, Misfit, Chardonnay, Cabernet, Scarecrow, Corey, Lincoln, Sourdough, Donkey, The River Weasel, Roxy, and Myself.