I'm baaaaaaack!

Greetings loyal fan club members! (ha ha) My sincere apologies for my lack of blogging last night. I actual did some real camping at a real campsite without showers or internet or even cell phone service. Good times. It was really nice to be that out in the woods for the night. But rest assured, I still typed out a blog and saved it so I can post it. For your reading pleasure, I present....


Linville Falls, NC

Before I get to today, I gotta start with last night.

Having not slept well the night before, I was ready for bed early. I even turned off Grey’s Anatomy early to get to bed. As soon as my head hit the pillow I felt myself drifting off. As I was about to make that final pass into dreamland….beep! Huh? What was that? I must’ve been imagining it… Beep! Ok I guess not. What is that? It’s really annoying.

As I start to wake up again I realize it’s the low battery beep from the smoke alarm. One of my favorite noises in the world . So I called the front desk to get someone to fix it. Front desk tells me just to push the button on it and that will stop it. So I get up and try, and it seems to work. I lay down and get nice and comfortable in bed again and BEEP! Grrrrrrr. So I turn the light on (the first time I’d been balancing on my bed in the dark, which I’m sure would’ve been most entertaining had anyone been there to watch) and notice the button says to push and hold it down. So I try that and suddenly it’s no longer beeps but the full on painfully loud alarm noise. That of course scares the crap outta me as I’m standing with my ear right next to the thing! I probably jumped 10 feet and my heart was racing! But thankfully, the beeping did stop.

At this point I’m pretty well wide awake, so I decide to go pee before I try to sleep again. When I flush the toilet, the back of it turns into a geyser, shooting water everywhere and totally flooding the bathroom! WTF??!! I’ve never seen anything like it before. I considered calling the front desk again but the flow seemed to have stopped, leaving only a moderate sized puddle, and I was really too tired to care. So I get back in bed and try to convince my still racing heart that sleep is a good idea. Just as I’m starting to fade again, a new noise. This time it’s the phone, though it takes me a few rings to figure that out.

“Hello?” I answer groggily and probably not too kindly. It’s the nice little front desk man checking on me to make sure everything’s ok with the alarm. I appreciate the concern, but come on man, it’s the middle of the night! Ok it probably wasn’t THAT late, but plenty late enough for me considering how early I’d tried to go to bed. At that point I realized that I was much too awake to sleep, so I got up and read for a bit and watched Ghost Whisperer online. After starting my going to bed efforts at about 9:30, I finally fell asleep a bit after midnight.

After all that craziness I didn’t quite make the early departure I had planned. But I made it out of the hotel by 9:00, which is good for me. I decided to continue along the Parkway, because I was enjoying the drive and I wanted to go to some of the places I saw during Outward Bound. Of course all of my OB places were more than 100 miles down the road, and on this road, that’s a lot! I had planned to be able to make it to Boone by lunch time. Actually I had thought I’d be early and that maybe I’d just pick up lunch there for later. Instead, with all the slow driving, construction detours, and who knows what else, I didn’t make it to Boone until after 1:00. Really, it felt like someone snuck in and messed with all the clocks or something. I have no idea where the time went.
But I really wanted to go to Boone, because that’s the town where we had our one “town day” during Outward Bound. The funny thing was, downtown Boone, where we had been, was surprisingly hard to find. I drove from end to end of the town and never saw it. I guess it’s a lot like Park City….downtown tucked away where you’d never know it was there unless you were looking for it. I ended up having to backtrack a bit, which seemed silly but after putting in all the effort I really didn’t want to skip the only part of the town I knew.

My main memory from Boone is walking around looking for a restaurant that would have a burger, since I was so tired of trail food and craving red meat. I never did find one (though I found all sorts of vegetarian specialties…it’s that kind of town), which made it all the more ironic that while looking for downtown I found more burger places and steak houses than I could count!

I finally found downtown, and I did enjoy my trip down memory lane. Unfortunately though, memory lane was filled with traffic. There was all sorts of construction going on so the little main street was barely moving. It was really funny to look around and remember “that’s where I stood and talked on the phone for hours”, and “that’s the library where I finally got to check my email,” and “that’s the sandwich place that I thought would have to have a burger but they didn’t!”. I decided to get lunch at the pizza place where I’d had lunch when I was there for Outward Bound. When I was there before, I was even more ravenously hungry than I’d realized. I got a big pizza, expecting not to be able to eat it, and finished off the entire thing without ever really feeling full. That’s what happens when you go three weeks without ever being full! Today I got the same size pizza and had some for lunch, some for dinner, and have more left for breakfast tomorrow.

From Boone, I really wanted to go to Grandfather Mountain, which is my favorite hike I’ve ever done. It’s a lot like the Precipice hike that I did in Acadia National Park….lots of ladders and cables and things to climb up rock faces. It was definitely one of the major highlights of my OB course. Unfortunately, when you’re not with OB it costs $15 to get in. I was willing to pay, but just as I was arriving at the spot to pay, the fog rolled in. The mountain tops were suddenly completely socked in, and you couldn’t see a thing. Definitely not worth it to pay $15 to go to a mountain I can’t actually see. So I turned around and started heading back to the Parkway. Of course as soon as I left, the fog seemed to leave with me. I considered going back and trying again, but I figured this was Mother Nature’s way of telling me not to bother with it today.
Instead I went to Linville Falls, which is on the far edge of Linville Gorge. Though I didn’t go there with OB, nearly all of our program was in other areas of this Gorge, so it was kind of the same. I got to hike for a few miles and get some nice waterfall pictures, though the area was completely crowded with very slowly hiking tourists. I happened to drive by a campground on my way to the waterfall hike and noticed it was packed! And packed full of tents! To me this was a very exciting site! There were other campsites coming up but I figured I might as well stay, because who knows what might be coming next. The other ones may be creepy and deserted like so many areas I’ve seen. So that’s where I am tonight….right next to Linville Gorge, surrounded by lots of other people in tents. Apparently camping season is not over yet in the South. I’ve heard talk that it ends around Columbus Day. Of course I have no idea when Columbus Day is, but I think it’s somewhat soon….right?

I tried to get a fire going but just couldn’t seem to get it right. I got lots of hot flames and hot coals, but things just wouldn’t catch and it kept burning itself out. I think it’s the humidity in the air. It’s so strange….it’s not raining, but if you drive, your windshield gets wet. But the lack of fire really didn’t matter much, as I found myself falling asleep while sitting up by it. So I’m going to try round 2 of going to bed early. This time there’s no smoke alarms, but there is guy in the site next to me who is snoring louder than I’ve ever heard a person snore. And I’ve heard some loud snorers (Dad)! At least he’ll scare the bears away. Or perhaps he’ll draw the bears in, making them think they’ve found another of their kind.