Top 5 Favorite Places on the Appalachian Trail

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Check out this list of my Top 5 Favorite Places on the Appalachian Trail.

Music By: Thunder/Dreamer

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Tags: Appalachian Trail,AT,AT thru-hike,Thru-Hike,backpacking,hiking,long distance hiking,Damascus,Boiling Springs,Hot Springs,The White Mountains,Fontana Dam,Smokey Mountains

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hey guys it's Darwin here with my top 5 favorite places on the Appalachian Trail that you should check out on your next through hike or section hi [Music]

all right so I figured I would compile a list of my top five favorite places while hiking the Appalachian Trail in 2015 and in 2016 through all 2189 months these are places that snuggle and I stayed for either a zero day just to resupply maybe just to grab a bite to eat my top five favorite places that I really enjoy just kind of getting off the trail and kind of getting my bearings together and giving whatever I needed it wasn't on the trip so number five this one's kind of controversial I guess mainly because you'll hear a lot of people say really negative things about the place I had nothing but really great experiences at the place but number five is going to be fun

Tanna village fontana village is a little resort that you come to a North Carolina and it's right before you enter the Smoky Mountain so right before Fontana Dam you'll enter Fontana village a lot of people will pass through it not resupply at it and just go to a place called the Fontana Hilton a very famous shelter that's on the trail a lot of Tigers just stay there before entering the Smokies but we actually got a small cabin in Fontana village so you can either stay there at the hotel or you can go in with some other hikers and get this little bitty cabin so me and about three other hikers went in on this little cabin it was a great experience we had a resupply box to go there because we were told that things were super expensive at Fontana village they have a little bitty grocery store so we were told it was really expensive so we did have a box if to is there so we did pick up stuff but we went to the grocery store and still had to get some stuff and really good it's not that expensive it wasn't whenever we were there in 2015 I'm sure some prices might have come up or come down but it wasn't as bad as everybody said it was so really good positive experience there they had a laundromat that we all did our laundry on we had the big hiker family and pretty much some of us stayed in the hotel some of it stayed in the little cabin but that night were there we had everybody over to the cabin we cooked the dinner some stuff that we had kind of scored out of the hiker box poor-man's alfredo found some Parmesan cheese we got butter from the store found some noodles we made some frozen pieces and we just had this really awesome fun party and it's really great because everybody was super nervous about going into the Smokies especially because of the weather it was really cold they were snow on the ground it was raining so everybody got to really relax have a couple beers eat some food it was just a great experience a great trail family experience so definitely check out fontana village is a great place number four now I've talked about this place in a couple of my other videos and it's probably one of my favorite hostels on the entire 80 it's in Damascus Virginia it's right whenever you come into Virginia the famous hiker town of Damascus

number four is woodchucks hostile wood chef kostow opened up a handful of years ago whenever we were coming into town we didn't really know where to stay and we were in a shelter before we came into town and some people are talking about how they had stayed there they were doing a section hike and it was great they had a free waffle breakfast so we've never heard of the place so we figured we'd give it a try we called up woodchuck we set up a reservation and our hiker family at that time there was five of us we all got the entire top room on the top floor room and we had a great time there we took a knee row so we came into town and just hiked a couple miles into town stay there that night and then we took a zero we got a ton of stuff done have some really good food we had a giant pizza delivered woodchucks was great a super awesome wholesome great chilled out environment woodchuck himself was awesome he cooking all-you-can-eat waffle breakfast every morning with cereal and all that is included in your stay you could camp in his backyard I even did some barber work on our friend cider I shaved off a bunch of her

err there and they letter G some drummer so it was a really great place and not only did we have a great experience when we went through there but when we came back for trail days we stayed there again and we camped out in his yard for trail days instead of camping at Kent City he kind of had his own miniature tent city across from woodchucks and we stayed there so yeah woodchucks is a really awesome place I know there's a lot of great hostels in Damascus that you can stay but if you're going through Damascus definitely try out woodchucks again I can't say enough good things about that place I really really loved it

number three this place you don't ever hear a lot of people talk about and it was kind of a mystery to us as well because we didn't really know anything about it we adjusting in our a wall guide so we figured we'd give it a try and that is the alan berry resort in Boiling Springs Pennsylvania so it's pretty rare that I'll say a lot of good things about Pennsylvania it was not my favorite place on the trail with the exception of the Allen berry the Allen berry is this really old resort it's a hotel that also has a playhouse so you can go see a play they had a bar in a restaurant we just kind of took a chance on this place and everybody that stays there really really loved it it was super cheap to get a room the rooms had two beds in them so they had a little hikers you know that have the entire resort for different people that stay there and then they have a little bitty building that has some older hotel rings in there there specifically for hikers it was like $50 for two people a night so it's 25 bucks a person they had a really awesome breakfast bar in the morning they had a bar that we wouldn't show down at we didn't take a zero there we only took a Nero but it's one of those places where I actually kind of wish we would have taken a zero it was a really cool place and I really like to visit it again so definitely check out the allenbury resort in Boiling Springs Pennsylvania number two this one is kind of a duh and I would think that it would make just about anyone list and that is Hot Springs North Carolina love me some hot springs Hot Springs is another one of those hiker towns it's the first place that you come to whenever you come out of the Smokies so we're Fontana Village with the first place that you hit before you go in Hot Springs is the first place you hit whenever you come out hot spring is great it is a classic hiker town I believe it is the original Appalachian Trail hikers down just because the original 80 hostel and the oldest hospital on the trail is located in Hot Springs which is called Elmer's Sunnyside in place is amazing everything about Hot Springs is great so a very small town very trail specific whenever you walk down the sidewalk there's 80 symbols on the sidewalk in the concrete Homer's is a beautiful big Victorian house he is a bed-and-breakfast that he rents out to hikers where you can stay and have breakfast or dinner and stay in the room there's no cell phone service there's no internet no TV it's a very calm quiet relaxing place if you want something a little more upbeat there's a couple hospitals in town there's a Free Church Hospital there's an awesome outfitter there and some of the best food on the trail there's the Appalachian 12 diner and there's also a little bitty bar that's right next to the creep where you can get some amazing food like the hiker burger had a really great time in hot springs that was one of the places where we took our first zero really relaxing it is one of my favorite if not my favorite place on the Appalachian Trail as far as towns go I like to much better than Damascus Hot Springs is amazing you'll go through it anyways if you're doing a thru-hike so make sure you take some time there because hot springs is great and number one my number one favorite place on the Appalachian Trail was right after the White Mountains it's right after you come out of the white White Mountains Lodge and hostel White Mountains lodge and hostel is located in Gorham New Hampshire and it is the first place that you come to right after the wife and it's literally right down from the trail so you exit the Wildcats which is one of the hardest parts of the trail and was the hardest parts of the wife and it's right down the road it's this great little place it was amazing their money

who is the new owner of the place is a fantastic coach he fits an amazing breakfast does laundry for hikers has hiker clothes that you can put in super relaxing plays really great vibes we went to the store she took us to Walmart we got food we grilled out there we had a really really amazing time at White Mountains lodging hostel no Gorham New Hampshire actually reminded me a lot of hot springs just kind of the way it's set up the little restaurants the little town feel the hardware store the outfitter

all of that really kind of reminded me of hot springs and then really White Mountain Lodge and hostel kind of reminded me of Elmer's there was internet service and phone service and stuff like that but she fixed a big breakfast in the morning it had this really communal feel to it a very family-oriented feel to it amazing place again it's my favorite place on the trail I would love to just go back there and stay there for days just stay there and see hikers and talk to hikers and who knows we might do that in the future but if you're in that area whether you know you just got done with the Medusa Grange and you're about to start the whites going southbound or you're going northbound and just got done with the wife definitely check out white mountains Lodge and hostel it was a great great place alright guys so hopefully that gave you a little insight some of my favorite places on the 80 for the two years that I was on the Appalachian Trail everybody has their own opinion and everyone has a different experience depending on the different place that they go you know some of the places that I didn't like it all some people absolutely loved and some of the places that I loved people had a terrible experience at so it's all about your experience

than what you make of it but definitely check those places out if you do get a chance because I had a really great time and they really helped shape my 80 experience if you haven't got a chance yet go over and check me out on Instagram I've been posting a lot of new photos lately of some of the things that snuggles and I have coming up and this Sunday I'll actually be releasing a photo of some really big news that snows when I had to share with you on our next step and our next big adventure in life so make sure you're following me over on there go ahead and light or dislike this video subscribe to my channel if you haven't already there's always guys thanks for watching [Music]

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