Chimney Rock

When Chris and I started talking about spending a week in the mountains we put together an impressive wish list of hikes that we wanted to take.  So impressive we had to whittle it down.

What survived the cuts and made it to the top of the list was Chimney Rock.  We'd seen the signs for years on our trips from Athens to Durham but never actually made it there.  We'd been watching the scenery go by from the vantage point of our futon on movie nights when Daniel Day-Lewis was the order of the evening.

(Incidentally, this scene is filmed on top of the waterfall we hiked to.  We were at the bottom of the falls, but it was beautiful nonetheless.)



Chris had bought a great child-backpack off of ebay and so we set off.

Now, you should probably understand a couple of things before we get started.  I love hiking.  I lurve it.  More than once I have considered just walking off the path and going native.  But...I haven't really been hiking since Chris and I got together.  Why?  Because my man doesn't really hike.  He doesn't particularly enjoy physical exercise of any kind.  It's important to know this at the start because he's going to say some things that are just funny in any language, but you have to know this little quirk about my favorite computer junkie--let's call him Christopher the Inert.

But in the spirit of marital harmony he agrees to hike with me so long as I periodically watch movies and vegetate with him.  And since I'm all about marital harmony, I agree.  At least I get my hiking.

We were handed a map of the trails at the entrance gate and Chris was thinking that a nice leisurely walk in the woods would be good.  I managed to talk him into the Hickory Nut Falls trail.  After all, it was nice and short and shouldn't be too difficult.  So we head down there.

And by down there I mean down down DOWN about 80 flights of stairs.  And I'm chattering away to distract Chris from the reality that eventually we'll have to climb back UP the stairs.  Maybe he just won't notice...la la LA.

We get down there and I confess, I am so happy that I'm all but trotting...like those annoying yappy happy dogs that run circles around their people.  Poor Chris is schlepping the Boy, heretofore known as the 30 pound Wonder, on his back and here I am trotting and bouncing up and down the trail.

He really was a great sport though.

He has a very forbearing face, no? 

Want to see how happy I was?  It's a little nauseating...

Big, tough M scampering down the trial, annoying her husband by climbing OFF the trail and onto enormous piles of fallen rocks.

We finally got to the falls.  Lo, it was beautiful.

Ok, so you can't really see the falls here...what you can sort of see through the trees is the sheer rock face...

That's better.

We climbed over the fallen rocks to the pool that the water falls into.  We took a nice break with our boy, drank some water, chased some butterflies and then headed back out.

Now.  I'm not bragging or anything.  I'm pretty woefully out of shape as well, having not really exercised since the Spring, but I was feeling pretty good so I was totally up for climbing all the way to the ROCK.  Even after 4000 stairs back up.  At which point I started to wonder if Chris would ever go hiking with me again.

But Chris and the 30 pound Wonder nixed the hike up to the Rock in favor of taking the ELEVATOR up and then hiking back down.  Which is an example of a perfect compromise.

The views were AMAZING.

But I guess if you don't really want to hike you could just watch Last of the Mohicans instead.