Yesterday Matt and I got up early and served as race marshals for the 5k Fund Run in Reston. We had a fun time goofing around in the woods until the racers started coming by (managing to embarrass a number of power-walking old people who caught us kissing on a bridge; then, that was topped off by my saying loudly, "Boy, there are a lot of OLD people out today!" as Matt muttered under his breath, "Yes there are, and there's one right behind you"). Then we had a great time cheering on the racers--anytime I feel a little awkward about interacting with strangers, I just ask myself what my sister would do. Voila--"Keep it up, gals, looking good! Almost there! WHOOOO!" Matt was at the station after mine and he told me a lot of people came around the corner with silly grins on their faces, so it must have worked!
After that, we decided it was too nice of a day NOT to be hiking, especially since Sunday was forecast to be rainy and cool. So we packed up some leftovers and our hiking gear and hit the road, hoping to hike the trail we weren't able to a couple of weeks ago.
Well, boy, was somebody looking out for us when we weren't able to hike it that week. As you'll recall, the trail was closed for search and rescue activities (more sad details here). Given that after the first mile of straight uphill scrambling, I was pretty sure they were going to find my body next, it's a reeeally good thing we didn't attempt this with backpacks and in the rain. We would have slipped right down to the bottom. As it was, it was a pretty punishing hike through an incredibly steep gorge--I sat down a little less than halfway through and told Matt I thought we should turn back. My legs felt like jello and I couldn't imagine how I was even going to backtrack what we'd done already, let alone go the rest of the five miles. He hedged, saying, "Here, sit down for at least fifteen minutes and have something to eat, and then we can figure out the easiest way to get back." I told him I wasn't hungry, but inhaled a banana anyway, and then he tried the angle of "I think the second half will really be easier than having to climb all the way back down these steep rocks."
He ended up being right. Once we got to the top, the trail leveled off, and the rest was, literally, all downhill from there. There was a fascinating little pioneer cemetery, which including a lot of headstones from the 1800's-1900's as well as many graves marked just with fieldstones, and it also had a plaque which outlined the rather sad history of Shenandoah National Park which was previously unbeknownst to us. Read it--it's very interesting.
We were having another couple over to dinner in the evening, but that didn't stop us from hiking late and even stopping off at our favorite winery on the way back. As a result, we got back with about an hour to wash the trail off, clean up the apartment (which looked like a bomb went off), and make dinner (44-clove garlic soup, gnocchi with pesto, homemade bread, and homemade ice cream). We pulled out all the stops and used every shortcut we could--washing up at the sink with a washcloth, piling everything in the bedroom and closing the door, stashing the dirty dishes in the bathtub. The soup and the gnocchi turned out great, the bread pretty well, and the ice cream like chocolate soup--so we didn't even mention it, just offered them an espresso after dinner. All in all, we congratulated each other on pulling off a pretty successful approximation of a dinner party!
Today, it was indeed rainy and so we spent most of the day backtracking over the cleaning shortcuts we used yesterday, to get things actually clean and put in their places. We have three Netflix movies to catch up on and so we'll probably take in one or two of those. And our trip to Georgia and the Smokies is in less than two weeks, so we've got plenty of planning to do!
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