4/9: Hot Springs to French Broad River Tent Site

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• Mile 274.9 to 275.9 (1 mi)
• Total ascent 151′; down 105′

Rachel and I woke up this morning in an Italian-Victorian hostel, the first place I’ve stayed I might call a mansion. 

Built in 1840 and expanded in 1875, Elmer’s Sunnybank Inn has no central air or even radiators. Each room has its own fireplace, with 14-foot ceilings and vent windows above the doors to allow heat to rise in the summer. Every banister, fireplace, and even toilet paper holder is ornate and thick, as if every fixture had to be a work of art and natural resources were infinite. 

Unfortunately, due to Covid-19, Elmer’s wasn’t cooking its famous vegetarian fare. Its laundry facilities were also off-limits to hikers, due to the inn needing them to launder towel and linens. 

To clean our clothes, we walked over — in fact, we walked backward on the trail — to Laughing Heart Hostel, which has the only publicly accessible washer and dryer in town. We daydreamed of the local diner, our dreams made more urgent and unsatisfying by the picnic table we sat at and the full bear cans in our packs, as we waited. The 18-minute wash timer took, in fact, around 40 minutes.

While waiting, we met Pythagoras, a 19-year-old Rhode Islander majoring in math. Pythagoras, like me, operates a blog — the name of which, frustratingly, I did not get — but has struggled to update it more often than weekly due to signal issues and the rigors of the trail. Pythagoras began the AT on March 17, doing over 100 miles in the first week, but did just 60 his second on account of a slower group he joined. 

After putting up our laundry and leaving Pythagoras at Laughing Heart, we ambled to the Smoky Mountain Diner. At the diner, where we met Maki and other friends, I ordered the fried fish sandwich lunch and Rachel the BBQ sandwich with onion rings and pie. 

After enjoying entirely too much food, and at least three cups of coffee each, we paid our tab and began walking north. We stopped briefly by the Post Office, where Rachel mailed a beat pair of Darn Tough socks, cashing in on their no-hole lifetime warranty, as we left town. 

We crossed a pair of disused railroad tracks and passed the once-grand Hot Springs Resort, after which we turned right. Despite poor trail markings, we found the AT across and under a bridge heading back into Pisgah National Forest.

Taking a “nero,” we quickly claimed a campsite next to the French Broad River. Across the river were paid campsites and RV hookups, but we had no need for running water, power, or picnic facilities. 

At camp, we shrugged off our packs. Between two small oaks we strung a clothesline, not only to ensure our clothes dried properly after we cut short the dryer cycle from this morning’s wash, but also to apply permethrin, an insect treatment. 

With highs in the 70s, flies have begun to swarm. Not long behind them, we worry, are the ticks and mosquitos. 

But for now, we are clean and unbitten. We are glad to be out of town again, if only just, at a site loud enough to drown out rustling in the forest we’d otherwise need to rationalize away. 

With full bellies, we have a few hours until we need to start making dinner (and a few before we can use our tent again, due to the permethrin treatment). What more reason do we need to indulge in a nap by the water?

None, but we did have a reason to get up: a sprinkle, unforeseen in the prior day’s forecast. 

We raced to take our clothes off the line we’d strung, and to cover our packs. We had spent literal hours waiting to use the sole public dryer in town that morning, so we weren’t about to let our clothes get all wet. 

After securing our gear, I got the cook pot and stove out. Rachel and I had been debating walking back to town to get a pizza, which I took as a sign it was time to make dinner. Leftover from our last resupply were four tortillas and four packs of grits, which I spiced up with cayenne and olive oil. I poured the food, minus the tortillas, into a freezer bag and began squeezing. Rachel rolled the oily mix into burritos. 

To avoid carrying our smelly food packaging, and on account of us being only a mile out of town, I volunteered to find a trash can. Unable to find one at the resort area we walked passed on our way out of town, I did, in fact, walk all the way back to Hot Springs City Hall (further, even, than the pizza we’d discussed walking back for).

When I got back, Rachel was lounging in a natural recliner made from an angled tree trunk above the river. We piled rocks atop the bear cans, crawled in the tent, turned on Great Expectations, and listened to Pip question Magwitch, the convict Pip helps escape at the beginning of the story and who in turn surprises Pip with great wealth Magwitch made in the New World.

Feeling tired and wealthy ourselves, we called it a night. Neither of us heard anything but the rush of the river until the morning.