Hot Springs to Spivey Gap

After staying at Elmers famous sunnybank Inn I finally had the motivation to leave the awesome trail town of Hot Springs behind and head toward my home state of Virginia. The night in Hot Springs Elmers was booked but I got a reservation for the second day and wow what a place. Elmers is in a house thats over 100 years old which is cool took start out with and then you add Elmer. Elmer offers breakfast and dinner but theres a catch. All the meals are homemade by Elmer. I only aye dinner there but it was a full 4 course meal. I usually don’t like vegetarian meals but Elmer is a master of his craft of cooking. One of my favorite places to stay on the whole trail so far.

       Hot Spring to Allen Gap

After starting at Elmers I was ready to get back on the trail. So I had a nice 15 is mile day from Hot Springs to Allen Gap.  It was a nice day. I pushed past the shelter to a place called Allen gap which is essentially right in front of a highway and beside a storm called Mom’s. Mom’s is a very interesting place. Mom’s is written on the sign in what looks like sharpie however the guy that runs it is nice and the have drinks and snacks for hikers. Got to camp with a few guys I hadn’t seen in a while so it was overall a good day even with the car noises all night .

Allen Gap to Flint Mt Shelter

The first half of the day was good hiking but it was apparent that bad weather was on the way. I pushed the last 3 miles in the rain to Flint Mt shelter . With the push I ran into a bubble of folks I’d never met before which is always nice. The rain let up long enough for me to set up and thanks to some trail magic brought by stretches friend we had an awesome night. It was also time to celebrate 300 trail miles!

Flint Mountain to Bald Mointain Shelter

This was another long day full of rain. Due to the previous day’s rain and such I got as later start but this put me in the woods later in the day which put me in a good spot to see some critters moving around. This was a good day to  hike the was a nice grassy bald to hike over that reminded me of some of the post cards I had seen in stores. In my late after noon hiking I saw two deer. It was a strange experience. I seen deer before and they usually just run at any sign but this one just stood there at maybe 50 yards staring at me. I whistles and clicked my trekking poles together but this deer just stared. I grabbed a quick pic which you can find on Instagram if you wanna see (@cguynn). Overall the day was pretty decent.

Bald Mointain Shelter to Spivey Gap

After I got to Bald Mountain shelter and while I was on my way it started to rain. This rain was a little different in that it didn’t stop for hours and even brought a little haill with it. The next day taking with some others in the shelter who got a shuttle into Erwin, Tn I chipped in and put the trail on pause so I could at least get a few hours of continuous dryness before heading back out. So here I am night two staying with Uncle Johnny before heading back into the tunnel tomorrow.

If any of you still reading my updates have any questions, comments, or want to hear more about certain aspects of the trail in my updates let me know.