I have found such a cute town! Boiling springs, PN.

As soon as I walked in, it was so picturesque. Immediately, a friendly local stopped me and chatted me up for about 15 min. He strongly recommended I come work in one of the nearby hospitals.

I never mentioned in my blog, but a couple days after the bear crawled on my tent, and I was contemplating going home, I got a call letting me know that my work leave of absence was discontinued and I had been replaced. No warning or choice given. Just like that I was unemployed.
I immediately got working on getting private health insurance and got everything taken care of. Since then, I have wondered what I want to do for work when I am done with the trail. I really miss Chris, so I don't see myself going far from him.
Boiling springs will definitely go on my list to check out someday.
The nice man we first met in town recommended that we go to cafe 101 for breakfast. That's what we did. As soon as we got there, some more locals just finishing our breakfast started talking to us and asking about our hike. When we went in to order our breakfast, and started getting out our wallets, the woman behind the counter said to put our money away, someone else has already paid for our (my and Voltron's) meals. We went back out to thank the man, he shook our hands and wished us well on our trek to Maine. It is amazing how giving and loving some people are!
We are staying at a resort called the Allenberry resort and play house. Usually rooms here go for $154/night. They have a thru hiker deal for $40. It's a great deal, so we didn't want to miss it. Unfortunately, we kind of feel like the dancers in "dirty dancing", as we were kind of treated like 2nd class citizens. We weren't able to check in until 3 o'clock (regular guests can check in anytime), and once we did, we found that there wasn't an evening show. If we had been able to check in earlier, I probably would have bought a ticket for their matinee play. Oh well. Campus and guests here really do remind me of "Dirty Dancing". It's kind of funny. It's nice, but I sure am glad I got to try it out for a cheap deal. I would not be impressed if I was paying full price.

In my last post, I failed to mention the trail angels we met last week.
First of all, it was a 6 day section between re-supply. That makes for a heavy pack, and I tried to go as light as I could, but I knew I was going to be hungrier. Turns out we were able to have pizza delivered to one of the parks we passed through. We also had a trail angel bring us fresh fruit and orange juice. The next morning, the same trail angel (a friend of another hiker) brought us more fruit and juice for breakfast. As the trail passed through another park on another days lunchtime, King Krawler, a past thru hiker was serving hikers lunch. For me, he had a yummy blackbean burger, soda, chips, and chocolate. Basically the hikers 4 food groups.

That evening, we hiked past the shelter where there was a locked PATC cabin that our guidebook said we could camp by. When we got there, we had gone over 18 miles and were pretty tired as the days heat was in the 90's. We got there to find a couple who had just arrived and had rented the cabin for the weekend. Jerry and Jean had every right to ask us to move on, but they were nice enough to let us put our tents pretty much in their front yard. They also visited with us, and gave us a container of fresh cherries to eat with our dinner. Jean offered to make s'mores with us, but I was even too tired to make s'mores. They were very nice, and we got to see them again the next day during our ice cream challenge coma.
Since we decided to take a zero day in Pine Grove, we were able to attend a free lunch put on for hikers from the volunteers at the AT museum. After lunch we had a meet and greet and Q&A session with hikers and the community. It turned out to be such a great experience, making me even more proud to be part of the AT community. One hiker, Sipsy, whom I have agreed to let adopt me, told a very heartfelt story. He became tearful as he described a cold wet day when other hikers pulled together to help him when he was in trouble.

I can't write enough about how great this community is!

Foot update: the rest has done me well. My feet are looking better. I will continue to put dressings on the problem areas until it is completely healed. Hopefully, they will get me through the rocky areas we have to come.