Whew…the time is just slipping away here on my vacation! Only one full day left and then we’re hitting the road tomorrow morning to head back home. Time sure does fly! I’m not really looking forward to going back because I have to work two days next week, which means my summer is officially coming to a close in the near future. Boo! I know I shouldn’t complain…most people do not get as much time off as us school employees do, but I could use just a few more days.
Anyways, Days 4 and 5 have been just as fun-filled, relaxing, and adventurous as the first 3. On Tuesday we decided to take a break from hiking and rent some mountain bikes to bike down the Virginia Creeper Trail. The VC Trail is a 34 mile (non-paved!) mountain bike trail that starts on Whitetop Mountain, goes 16.8 miles to Damascus, and ends 17 miles away from Damascus in Abingdon, VA. The part that goes from the mountain to Damascus is pretty much all downhill. There are shuttles that take you to the top of the mountain (a 30 minute drive) and drop you off there to ride down. We took advantage of all of these things and hit the trail. The ride was great. You could probably go the whole way down without peddling, if you wanted to go at a slow pace. We did some peddling, but not much! The trail ran along a river for most of the way, and there was some really pretty scenery. I’ve never ridden on a mountain bike off a road before, and it was an interesting adventure.
It’s hard to take pictures while riding on a mountain bike!
One of the 30-some railroad trestles we crossed over. Very cool!
After we reached Damascus, we decided to continue riding on the flat portion of the trail for a little while since we still had some time before we had to turn the bikes back in. I made it about 10 minutes out and wanted to turn around. I do not like mountain biking while on flat ground! It’s slow, I feel the weight of the bike under me, and my hands hurt quite bad from the vibrations of being off-road. Give me a road bike any day! So we did the 10 minutes back to the store and gave them their bikes back. All in all, the ride lasted about 2 hours. I had run that morning, so I didn’t feel too bad about the lack of difficulty of the day.
After the biking adventure, we set out to go see Harry Potter. I think most people would agree, the book is waaay better. But I’m not here to critique the movie.
Thursday (yesterday) was our big hike day! I had a swim on my training schedule, but since there’s no means of swimming, I decided to take a “rest day” from training, although the day did not involve any rest! We mapped out an approximately 11 mile hike that involved 9 miles on the Appalachian Trail. We had received a recommendation from a local on the area the trail is in for the scenery of the area.
The hike was awesome! There were so many overlooks, lots of rocks to climb up, wild ponies that walked right up to you (obviously they have been fed by other hikers!) and let you pet them, and a wide variety of terrain. Half the time while hiking we were on the tops of the mountains where there are no trees and it felt like we were in the Sound of Music of something. My only complaint was that it was very foggy, which reduced visibility on those overlooks dramatically and made for less-than-stellar picture opportunities. Oh, and while climbing up a large rock to get a better view, I dropped my camera in a puddle and it stopped working. I’m letting it dry out, so we’ll see if it decides to work again or if I’m going to have to replace my not even one year old camera. So, no pictures were taken after that, including missing out on the wild ponies. They were very cute though. We saw about 12 of them total, including some newborn ponies!
But anyways, here are some pictures from the hike before the camera fiasco. We’ll see if my camera works today, otherwise there will be lack of pictures until I get a new one, I guess!
The white speck in the middle is an RV. We started our day down by that RV and immediately began an uphill climb to the point where I took this picture. Notice all the fog.
Up on top of one of the many mountain tops we climbed. There were hardly any trees and the views were great (minus the fog!).
We climbed to the point that we were actually in the fog. Those are my parents ahead of me.
Keifer hiked most of the day off leash. He even led the group at one point and somehow knew what the trail was and where it went. I was pretty impressed with his hiking skills today, especially when climbing up all the rocks that were strewn about the trail. I called him Mountain Dog! Here he is in front of a “white blaze”.
And this was the rock that did my camera in. Eric climbed up there and said at the top, “I should’ve brought a camera with me! The view is great!” That was my signal to climb on up there and check it out and take some pics. Unfortunately I made it about half way up and my camera fell out of a pocket in to the puddle. So the pictures end here. And it was such a great view!
After the hike, we came back to our house and had brats and hot dogs on the grill before hitting the sack. I think everyone was a little tired after the long hike! Keifer is still sleeping and just doesn’t have the same “spunk” to him as he usually has in the morning.
Today were planning a last hike which will be on the short side. Then we’re going out for dinner tonight and packing up to leave tomorrow. I’m getting a 30 minute bike, 45 minute run in today and hopefully a 90 minute run in tomorrow. We’ll see how my legs feel after yesterday’s hike!
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