A Great New-Old Idea

We drove to Asheville today to drop off our rugs to be cleaned.....no dirty rugs in the new cabin!!! Of course we got there too late...Togar Rugs closes at 5pm on Sat....6pm weekdays....so, dogs in tow, we were hungry. The only place to eat out while on Weight Watcher's is Subway. No Subway at Biltmore Park. No Subway at Biltmore Square Mall. So, a small McD's hamburger would have to do for me..... (Clyde isn't on Weight Watchers!)

We were planning to head up to the Blue Ridge Parkway to get these doggies out for a little exercise...stir-crazy is their middle name these days! It was looking like rain that direction, but we ventured up. Meeting a few showers, we laughed at Marley as we drove through tunnels and watched her confusion at the suddenness of nightfall, then back to daylight again!

Approaching the Black Balsam trail head we remembered that we had once planned to hike all the 6 thousand ft. mountains in the area...way back when...we were younger....the kids were young....a scrapbook of the hikes would make a great home school project. Guess what? It didn't happen. Things are different now, but it's not too late....so, we committed to attempting this again! We're not sure how many there are (peaks east of the Mississippi River above 6000 ft.). Clyde has a list somewhere. He's probably hiked many of them. Now we'll do this with dogs, not kids (same, but different!). We'll create a blog as a "scrapbook"....and no one gets a "grade"!

Today became our first 6K.....Black Balsam Knob...6201 ft. above sea level. We've done the hike...many times....Clyde growing up, when we were students at Montreat, with campers from Camp Buc, with my family from Louisiana, with our children.....nothing new...but it was New!!! The dogs kept us entertained to say the least...tangled leashes/barking at hikers/growling at a group of photographers.

At the top...several things stood out...the coolness...a breeze and almost cool enough for a jacket! The quiet!!! We live on a road now...with traffic...after 20 years of no noise but the creek and the birds....I savored the quiet today...it was soothing! As we hiked down we could see Mt. Hardy in the distance..we might head up there tomorrow. The sunset was amazing! The junco's were "drinking tea". And we have some mountains to climb!