Day 24: Stuck in the vortex

Hiked 0 miles, still staying at Elmer's.

People often describe Hot Springs as a thru hiker vortex.  Many hikers get stuck here for quite a while.  The town is great and the culture here appeals greatly to us.  In fact about 10% of the town are composed of thru hikers that moved here after they finished (that stat was from a local at the bar so I'm not sure about the exact accuracy of the number).  Regardless we have fallen victim to the vortex as well.

We had been waffling a bit yesterday because we were having so much fun here and the weather today was supposed to be dismal.  Amongst other reasons we did a good job last night making excuses for why we should stay.  When we were informed this morning that Elmer could fit us here another night, given how difficult it is to stay here we took it as a sign that we should stay.

With all of our errands taken care of yesterday we could focus today on two very important goals of a town stop, resting and eating.  The breakfast this morning at Elmer's was great.   He had homemade granola and walnut pancakes with strawberry compote and syrup along with fresh fruit.  We don't get much in the way of fresh fruit and veggies on the trail so they are definitely something we go out of our way to enjoy in town.

Pathfinder, World Pease, NBC (No big climbs), Bonzai and Srocket at breakfast

 I spent a little time at the welcome center this morning reading and learning about Hot Springs.  In world war one a bunch of merchant marine ships from germany got stuck in the US when the war started.  Hot Springs (named Warm Springs at the time) was turned into a POW camp for these 2700 sailors.  It was a somewhat informal POW camp and they were allowed to live pretty freely in the camp and built a large german architecture village over the course of their time here.  Many even were allowed to bring their wives here to live with them.  At the end of the war to celebrate being allowed to return home they blew up the village so unfortunately it no longer exists.

For lunch we headed over to the diner and ran into Dip'n'sip and Chaos who we haven't seen since Hiawasee!  We had lunch with them and I got the famous hungry hiker burger (12 oz).  With it being very rainy and cold out the afternoon was spent relaxing around the hostel.

Unfortunately we did not get another Elmer dinner tonight.  The hiker festival starts tonight and he wanted to encourage us to go to the big spaghetti dinner that they were putting on for us.  It was not as good but we did get to see a ton of hikers there.  It's amazing how full of hikers the town is getting.

Spaghetti dinner with Red Specs and Srocket in the foreground

We hit up the tavern again after dinner.  There are so many faces we  haven't seen in a long time it was awesome.  We ran into Vitamin C who we haven't seen since Woody Gap!  Apparently Uke is only a couple days behind, too bad we will miss him.  We also saw Hikergurl again.  She and the other Warrior Hikers are bring honored during the festival so they are all here.  We also saw Whiskey'n'women who we haven't seen for a while.

The reunion has been great.  The trail is like that.  Many describe it as a giant accordian.  You see people for a while, then get ahead or behind and 800 miles later you see each other again.  It's too bad that we can't stay for the festival to hang out with our friends but we will see them again up the trail.  Two zero days in a row is enough for us and we want to get out of the vortex and back in the trail.  We will be staying for one last awesome breakfast at Elmer's though!

Our main concern going forward is the Nora virus that us hitting hikers hard between Hot Springs and Demascus.  Emptying my intestines and stomach from both ends for 24 hours just doesn't appeal to me and on the trail the resulting dehydration can be a real problem.  For the next 100 or so miles we will be avoiding the shelters and trail registers and basically anything that lots of hikers touch since this is the main source of transmission.