Jun 17, 2011

When we got up, there was a park ranger there to let us know that our site was booked for later in the weekend so we would have to find another one. We took a walk around, picked out a site and moved all of our stuff so we wouldn't have to do it later. We had some breakfast and headed down to the visitors' center to find a hike for the day.

We took the ranger's suggestion to check out the Cedar Run/Whiteoak trail which started a bit down Skyline Drive. This is the first thing we saw on the trail. He was just hanging out there in the sun.

The trail was a long, rocky trail down. It was odd hiking down so far before doing anything else. It also meant we knew how much we'd have to hike back up later.

We got to a nice spot near the river and got in to cool off. The water was freezing, but it felt nice. Nathan was in first and then I got in. It was only deep in a few spots so we could walk around.

There was a little grotto upstream with a little waterfall that we had to get into. It was pretty strong and it was great to stand under.

We walked around that area for a bit and then decided to go back up to the waterfall that we had already passed to get into it.

I went up first and slid down the natural water slide. It was a little scary until I did it and realized it was totally slippery and not rough at all. And the water was really deep! It was perfect and ridiculously fun! We kept going up and coming down one after the other.



This video shows it better. It was so great. And we just spent time lying out on the warm rocks after that to dry off. We didn't really want to leave this area.

We continued our hike downhill and eventually got to a stream bed where I twisted my ankle a bit. It wasn't too bad after I rested for a minute. It figures it would be on a flat area though after all we'd been doing.

We came across a much bigger waterfall and watched other people jumping into the water from a ledge. We almost got in again.. but then we didn't. We started the trek up toward the car as thunder began to rumble in from far away, quickly getting louder and closer.

The rain started slowly, almost imperceptible under the heavy cover of trees. Soon though, we were soaked and taking our steps a bit more carefully up the rocky path. It came down hard for a while and we took cover under a rock ledge. We continued on as it slowly died down and then came to a stop.

It was a long walk back to the top, especially on the neverendingly steep fire road. The sun was back out and shining brilliantly through the trees as we made our exit back to where we started. It was quite a good hike after all that.

We were famished by the time we got to the car and we didn't bother to change before stopping at the cafe and getting dinner. The service was slow but the food was great. It was just nice to sit down, though we were freezing under the AC vent and still wet.

We did our best to start a fire when we got back to warm up a bit. It took some doing, but after a while we finally got it going. The wind was blowing really hard, which helped and hindered our efforts repeatedly.

The fire was burning for a while and then we called it a night, planning for a very early start the next morning.