The Great Outdoors

Recently, I went hiking. Specifically, my friend Dan and I (and our pups) are working towards hiking the Appalachian Trail.....in pieces of course, in no way would I consider doing a hike through. This was supposed to be a "Two-Day" hike.

Day One:
Here we are on the trail....notice Emmy (my dog) checking to see if I'm ok and then everyone leaving me behind. Because, I'm slow.



We also saw many of these plants. I don't know what they are, but they are very pretty and surprising considering how much tree cover there is on this part of the trail.



The weather that day was rather humid. They were predicting rain, but they predicted rain every time we've gone. We hadn't gotten more than a sprinkling in the past. Here is one of the views when we first started to hear thunder.



10 minutes later, it totally poured. Actually, not only poured, but thunder and lightning also. It was quite thrilling. The trail turned into a mini creek (pronounced crick of course). Thank goodness for ponchos. Though they didn't help much with the mud I kicked up from the trail onto my legs.

15 minutes after that it stopped and most of the rest of the hike was incident free. Until.....we reached the camp ground. Then it really started to pour. Dan and I (and the pups) took shelter at the camp ground bathroom. Lovely place to wait out a storm. We ended up waiting an hour for the rain to let up, so we could hike out and meet the rest of our camping crew. After 7.2 miles standing for an hour, was not my cup of tea.

The bright side was hearing a bunch of young kids (I think part of a youth group) freaking out because their tents flooded. We then set up camp and went to dinner. Dinner was tasty.

The best part was the fire. The hubby is excellent at starting fires and he got a nice one going. We all sat around roasting marshmallows and trying to not get bitten by mosquitoes. We had a few other hikes stop by to steal some smoke as bug repellent. A nice gentleman named Dave who specifically does these hikes for the climbing.

Sleeping.....that did not go well. Achy legs, barking and growling dogs, giggling kids and full bladder all prevented sleepage. Ugh! Sum total, maybe 1-3 hrs of sleep.

I gave up on the second day, 5 mile hike! Packed up and went home! Yay to sleep in my own bed. Unfortunately, now I have to make up that piece of the hike.....