Stubz and I expected a pretty nice hike that day. We had one pretty hard climb in the morning, then mostly downhill to the town of Erwin Tennessee. We decided to head to the Budget Inn in town rather than stay at the hostel along the trail. We would have to hitch once we got on the road, the town was being nearly 4 miles off the trail.

We stopped at the hostel and bought a coke to drink while we rested under the porch. We saw a few hikers we knew that were staying there and a few just arriving after us from the trail. We talked to a few people then started down the road toward town.

We hadn’t been hitching long when a lady stopped and asked us where we were going. We told her the budget motel in town. She said she was going part of the way if we wanted a ride, we took it of course, worse case it shortened the distance we had to walk. She dropped us off in a parking lot, and a man and his wife pulled in in front of us. The man got out and opened his trunk and stood waiting for us to walk up. “Y’all thru-hikers?”, he asked. “Yessir we are”, I responded. “Y’all throw your packs in the trunk and we’ll take you wherever you’re going.” We threw them in the trunk and he brought us straight to the motel. He also pointed out a couple places to eat that weren’t too far of a walk from the place we were staying. It never ceased to amaze me how good the people along the trail were to us.

We resupplied our food and washed our clothes. We ate at a Mexican restaurant about a mile from the hotel then walked back and called it a night.