Hot Springs, A Detailed Day In A Hiker Town

     We have spent the last few days in the small town of Hot Springs, NC population 650. We didn't really plan to spend as much time here as we did but we kind of fell in love with the little town (we hear a lot of hikers tend to). I arrived in town about a half hour before Tabb did and walked right over to this hostel that was right off the trail called "The Laughing Heart Hostel". I was informed by the man working there named Chuck Norris (His trail name since he looks just like him) that this was a new hostel that wasn't in our book and that it just opened 45 days ago. He said the hostel would be $12 a night and offered to show me the rooms. I said that I would check them out and the price seemed nice but I would have to wait for my brother to get down the mountain before I made a decision. The place looked nice and kind of had a dormitory feel to it do to the shared showers and the shared community living room with TV. When Tabb got down from the mountain he saw me sitting on the bench in front of the hostel talking to Chuck and came and joined us. We all talked for a while before I mentioned to him that this was a nice hostel and we should stay there since it was only $12. He agreed and said he didn't even need to look at it since I said it was nice and he liked Chuck Norris right off the bat.
     For dinner that night we went down to the local diner that was highly recommended by all the hikers and by Chuck. We went over there with a couple of our new friends that we met a couple days before this and actually gave one of them his trail name, Solo and 8 O'clock Sharp. We named 8 O'clock Sharp due to when Solo, Tabb and I were playing a game of cribbage in a shelter and he made known that he was going to be going to bed at 8 O'clock, 17 minutes from now, then in 13 minutes, then in 7 minutes. Anyways the dinner at the diner was delicious and we later came to find out that everything we were to eat there would be as well. After dinner we went down to the local bar 500ft away from the diner and had a beer with Solo. Solo is our cribbage buddy who has been playing for about 50 years he says, and has yet to win a game against me. We got to know him a little better and found that he was a youth counselor in Alaska for close to 30 years which was very interesting for my brother due to the fact that he is looking to go into the same kind of field of work.
     The next day we went into breakfast and had another amazing meal at this diner. After breakfast we went over to the public library which seemed like the only place anyone in the entire town was able to get internet access. We spent a couple hours there catching up with friends on Facebook and updating the Blog. Afterwards we went back to the hostel, I overheard people talking about work for stay opportunities that we may be able to do. I talked to Chuck about what kind of specialties that we have and let him know I was good with landscaping and my brother was into house flipping back home. When we went over to start working it turned out that the job he wanted us to do was to lay down click together flooring. When my brother heard this he was like "Awesome, this is what I do almost every day." So we got about half of the floor done in a couple hours and Chuck Norris was so surprised and happy that it looked good and that we knew what we were doing since he had never laid click together flooring. After we did our little bit of work we decided that we were going to do hot dogs for dinner on the grill. So we went down to the Hillbilly Market (that is what its actual name is) to get some hot dogs, buns and pickles. When we got back to the hostel we started to grill them up with Chuck and his wife Tigger who were grilling steaks for dinner that night. We had some great conversations with them while we were grilling and found out that they are actually from VA Beach and lived there for about 30 years. They even said that they knew our uncles and used to party on 50th st with them back in the day. After dinner we went down to the tavern again and hung out with all the hikers and played card games. We found out that the town really did revolve around the hikers when the bar even closed just after "Hiker Midnight" which is 9pm.
     The next day we were planning on leaving and found that Chuck Norris really wanted us to stay another day and help him finish the floor and he would let us stay for free again and take us out for breakfast. We figured it couldn't really hurt and we did want to finish the job that we started on the floor. After we got another delicious breakfast from the diner in town we started back on the floor. We finished it around 1pm and still had most of the day to relax. We decided we were going to go down to the market again and to buy some food to cook to save a little bit of money. We ended up actually getting a great deal on some frozen steaks, $7 for two one pound rib eyes. So we picked those up along with some mashed potatoes and a carton of chocolate ice cream and had an awesome lunch. After lunch our plan was to watch the first Lord of The Rings movie and play Wisest Wizard. Some of you older followers may have to look that up to find out what it is. We soon went into a food coma and fell asleep an hour into the movie. Later that night we were able to catch back up with Footloose who we haven't seen in about a week. It was really good catching up with him but he was going to be staying another day and we were heading back to the trail in the morning so we agreed to try and meet back up after we get back from staying with friends in Asheville.
     The next day it was raining in the morning and the electricity was even going in and out. We just sucked it up because we knew if we didn't get on our way or we thought we were never going to leave the town. Chuck Norris drove us down to the diner where we were going to have breakfast again before we left hoping that the storm would pass when we were eating. We had one last nice meal with him and then headed out on our way pleased to see that the rain had stopped and we would get to be walking in an overcast day without rain.
     It felt really good to be back on the trail but it was sad to leave such a nice little town. I really recommend going there if you are looking for a place to get away for a while. They have a lot of fun things to do there that we didn't get to do such as white water rafting and staying in the natural mineral baths that are offered from the resort for a daily price. Well this is what it is like in a trail town so if you see us not hiking for a little while on the spot tracker I hope you can now understand why.

-Turbo Toes