Day 12 - Zero in Gatlingburg

A zero is day without hiking but from my perspective it's anything but a zero.  There is so much to do even though you are off the trail.  For us Gatlinburg was a scheduled box drop and resupply.  I had also discovered that sleeping in a real bed was a bit of a problem for me.  For whatever reason I didn't sleep as well as when we were on the trail in the tent.  Go figure 😏  But we were so glad we had gotten into town before the down pour!

We started our day off with someone else doing the cooking and enjoyed breakfast at Crockett's 1875 Breakfast Camp.  I loved it!  They had great food, atmosphere, and service.  If you were a patron in the restaurant you probably thought we were P-I-G-S!  There was a lot of food on our table.  Hiker hunger was striking and we were filling the void.

Since we were in a touristy town we were tourist for about an hour.  Got gifts for the family and strolled the main drag, but once the real tourist started to fill the streets AKsherpa and I were out!  We had chores to do.  We strolled over to the NOC were I had sent our resupply box.  Signed into the register and asked the lady behind the counter for my box.  She looked at my I.D. and said, "I hope it's here."  What?? She hopes it's here.  It better be. It has 6 days of food in it and $$$.  I nervously waited and it felt like it was taking her way too long to find my box.  Finally, she returned and handed over our box.  It's like Christmas every time we get a box.  Since we shipped it two weeks earlier we had forgotten what were in them.

                    

 


Headed back to the hotel to organize food, make a grocery list, pack up nonessentials and buys from town to send back home.  Then we headed to the trolley station and headed to the Post Office.  I have to say small town Post Offices have great service. The gal behind the counter helped us save money and use her tape for free.  After completing that chore it was off to the grocery store.  We weren't entirely sure where the store was so I asked, "How far is the grocery store? Do we need to jump back on the trolley?"  The gal laughed at us.  "Honey, just turn around it's that building right across the street.  I think you can walk."  Ha, Ha the joke was on us and we were grateful it was so close.
                                                                                                                                                              Got everything on our list after doing three or four laps of the store.
Became a ValuCard member of Food City, which save me just about $5.

Then headed to the trolley station for the ride back into town where we went to the hotel to actually rest for a few.

South Pa and CoCo showed up and we decided on a restaurant for the evening.  Cherokee Grill - which met all of our requirements.  Meat for South Pa, Wine for AKsherpa, mixed drinks for me, and well CoCo just came along.  We all enjoyed steak and an adult beverage or two, great conversation, and service.  

After dinner we did a stroll of Main Street once again.  The tourist were hiding because it had just down poured during dinner.  We didn't mind.  Just as we finished and headed to the hotel the tourist were back out in full force and we were ready to finish up laundry and call it a night.

We had a shuttled scheduled for the morning to return us to the trail!