Woke up in a hostel bunkhouse bed. I slept really well. It sounded like it was raining all night, but it was actually the sound of the creeks and waterfalls outside our door. The rainfall did come early in the morning though. The temperature dropped and the rain turned to sleet, and from sleet into snow. It was quite baffling to think just 18 hrs ago I was hiking up a mountain out of Hot Springs in mid 70 temps and now it was snowing.

Trigger and I woke up about at the same time. We huddled around the small kitchen table in the center of the bunk house and cooked and ate breakfast. He shared some of his instant coffee with me. Outside our window we watched large snow flakes falling from the sky. I bundled up to head outside to walk to the bath house for a shower. After my shower I headed to the hostel store as internet and reception were non-existent in the bunk house.

With my hair still wet, I pulled my jacket hoodie over my head as I pushed my way out the bunk house door and back out into the elements. It was short walk to the store. I walked in and in the corner of the building I saw Cushy sitting and looking down on her phone. I walked towards her lifting my hoodie to reveal my face. She looked up, smiled, and leaped up out of her seat and gave me a big hug…“Wolverine!” We hugged each other and said simultaneously “it’s great to see you”. Again the last time we saw each other we got separated in a snow storm on the top of Clingman’s Dome. She knew I was struggling a bit and happy to see I was alive. We caught up over a cup of coffee.

We all planned on hiking this day but our drop off spot was on top of a mountain and the hostel driver didn’t feel comfortable driving up there with the road conditions so unpredictable with snow and ice. So we had to come with up with some alternative plans for the day. With poor internet and phone reception we were having trouble trying to coming up with a game plan.

A young man that worked at the hostel offered shuttling services as long as it wasn’t too far or up the mountain. I spoke to him for a bit. He walked with a limp. I asked if he was injured. He said not recently. He told me he was injured in a really bad 4-wheeler accident. When they “put him back together” he said, one of his legs was 2” shorter than the other ? He went on to tell me about the hospital and doctors in their town. He said a lot of junkies get taken there. And often times when being treated, the doctors could save their lives. But they just let people go all of the time. They think their lives aren’t worth saving? Then he asks if I’ve heard of the hiker that missing in their area. I told him I hadn’t. He told me they found his pack right down the road from them, but never found his body?

As if all of that wasn’t enough to freak out most people, we noticed we were all really “out of it”. We were lethargic, having trouble concentrating, unmotivated, and just felt down right lazy. We all agreed there must be something in the water at the hostel. We noticed quite a few other hikers had been there for days with no plan of leaving. We felt like everyone was being drugged and needed to escape!

We formulated an exit strategy and made our way to the nearby town of Erwin, TN. We figured we’d at least have phone reception and internet there. We’d grab lunch, make a few phone calls, and figure out our next move from there. Cushy, the organizing and planning guru, was making calls. She said, “hi this is Sara, I’m calling about booking a room”. I thought, who is this Sara person she is pretending to be? Then it dawned on me…that was her REAL name!

We ended up at a nice Marriott at another nearby town Johnson City. We checked in and before I knew it, we found ourselves in a heated pool, with big bay windows overlooking a …. cow pasture ? We went from a rustic shack in the snowy woods in the middle of no where with the sounds of banjos playing, to a heated pool in a Marriott, overlooking a cow pasture. A very strange day indeed.

We did end up going to a nice normal restaurant for dinner. It was myself, Cushy and Trigger. We discussed our next 5 days of hiking together. Our plan was to knock out 85 miles together. We felt good about this seeing how this day turned out to be an unplanned “zero” day. We went back to our rooms and crashed in our super comfy beds to end of day.

#HikeForHope
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