I must have seen a hundred deer. They just stand by the road and watch you drive by. No fear what so ever. Not good, but it is what it is I guess. You can tell the city drivers. They drive 5 mph and stop dead in the road every time they see one. I can just imagine it "Look honey, a deer. Hey kids! Look!" Probably the same people that feed them and make them so tame. It's not the deer you have to watch, it's the damn city drivers stopped in the middle of the road watching the deer. Sigh..
The plan was to go night hiking so I didn't take my camera with me. Not really the best decision I've made this week. But I'll definitely be back, so I can take pictures next time.
This picture is from the Shenandoah Park Website. And actually it was pretty humid out yesterday so the visibility was about the same. I'll replace the pic as soon as I go back and take a few of my own.So I'm sort of a scaredy cat. I was a little apprehensive about hiking through the woods at night. I mean, bears, coyotes, you never know what's going to be out there. But our night was absolutely uneventful in the danger category, and highly therapeutic.
It was just a short hike to test out the knee and get rid of my cabin fever. Probably 2.5 miles round trip. But it was awesome. We hiked down a trail that followed a stream. We listened to the water the whole way. The reason we chose that trail was the waterfall at the end. The path didn't really get close enough to see the falls. But we heard them. The hike back up was good exercise for my knee as well. Today my knee is really pretty normal. There's hope yet.
The very last part of our hike was down a small portion of the Appalachian Trail. We passed another hiker who remarked "that's not something you see every day" about meeting us on a trail at night. He was right. And it was sort of inspiring and comforting all at once. It's nice to know there are others that share your interests and posses that calm energetic quality that I think we all associate with the "outdoor" population. There's a certain romance to a lifestyle that embraces the outdoors.
Just before we got to the car we stopped to stargaze. It was a wonderfully clear night with not much moonlight providing perfect visibility. There were, of course, millions of stars, a few satellites, and then finally, the coveted shooting star. "okay, we can go now.."
It was probably 11pm when we started to head back. And to round out our adventure and accompany our 30 mile drive back out of the park, we picked up an interesting radio station. From the top of the mountain you pick up a huge variety of stations, many competing for the same frequencies. But the one we landed on was Dr. Drew (from MTV's Loveline) and Adam Corolla (from the original Man Show). People call in asking questions and making comments. It's the weirdest of the weird, but highly entertaining. Last night was unofficially "I'm attracted to transvestites" night. I mean, after an awesome hike, a beautiful night, and some stargazing, you sort of just say "well, I suppose.."
