A busy day in Evelyn’s birthday trip

After listening to trains blow the horn 5 times during the night, we were up around 9.  We decided to skip our breakfast bars and take a walk around town.  We found a more elegant bed and breakfast.  I had a talk with the owner concerning how silly it is for any business to belong to the Groupon program.  The price is to be half the regular price to the consumer, but Groupon wants half of that.  It does seem almost silly for any business to remain solvent in that environment.  Evelyn found a very spiritual couple who had been through some severe medical problems.  She had a hip bone that was shriveling, and she was treated with success.  He had accompanied her to a cancer treatment center in Illinois where people prayed together and for each other.  He was very changed in his spiritual life.  They were delightful to talk with.  We left there and visited the Visitor Center.  We got some good advice on trails to walk, so we drove to a trailhead and walked beside the Laurel River for over a mile along a beautiful rushing river.  We returned for lunch at one of the restaurants for which we had a $20 certificate that went with our room.  We sat overlooking another wide creek that flows through this mountain town.  We returned to our room for a rest before going to the hot spring tub site that the town is named for.  Hot mineral water is pumped from underground into modern hot tubs that are surrounded by board fences.  They are secluded individually even though there are 17 of them.  I thought we could walk there because it looked close enough.  The problem was that the welcoming sign was a long distance from the tub sites.  We didn’t stay in the tub for the entire hour we had paid for, but that was long enough for us.  I walked back to the hotel and got the car to pick up Evelyn and the bag of swim wear.  We rested for a while and then took a walk through a residential part of town.  From there we went to the hotel lounge to watch Special Report.  It is located above the restaurant, so we went down to use our second $20 coupon.  We enjoyed our dinner and returned to the lounge to watch Dancing with the Stars before we went to bed.