backpacking test run

Olympia wants to do more hiking, camping, rafting and any other more adventurous stuff. We tried for an overnight backpacking thing last fall but it didn't work out. This year, we plan on hiking on the Appalachian Trail in Georgia for a weekend. Someone in the ward is a thru hiker and is really excited so has offered us a ride so we can hike thru instead of out and back. That won't be until the fall but we are practicing now to make sure we can make it 8 miles a day with loaded packs on. We didn't do 8 miles today since we went after I got off work but we did 3 miles with loaded bags in 2 hours. I think we'll be fine. We have one more practice run left. We'll be going to stone mountain and hiking up and back down with the packs. It's pretty steep in spots and we've been told that that is what it'll be like.

There's a park nearby that has an equestrian trail, hiking trails and biking trails (all seperate). The trails were very nicely groomed. We had to walk the bike trail until we got to the turnoff for the hiking trail. The turnoff is hard to miss as it's a large arbor with flowering vines covering it. It smelled great.

We went down a lot of stairs and knew it meant trouble later on. At the bottom was a stream where we took a break.

100 years ago, these woods used to be a meadow pasture. You can see how quickly things get overgrown out here. There are a few original trees scattered around. We found one. It was huge! It could have fit at least three of me holding hands around it.

Once we crossed the river, we started back uphill.

It really had our calves burning.

Honeysuckle is one of my favorite flowers. It smells so good! It fills my lungs and makes me smile. I found out Olympia had never tasted it so I corrected that. It's too bad there's not much nectar in each one.

We took a wrong turn and ended up on a different trail which meant we didn't get to see the ravine overlook. I was looking forward to that. We came out on a different part of the bike trail and a guy passing by stopped and took our picture for us.

Instead of heading straight back to the car, we took the long way around, past the meadow they are restoring.

The bike trail was lined with these little trees that were covered in these little purple flowers. The flowers smelled good but it was their deep purple centers that I really liked. Olympia took some home to her horticulturist husband to identify them.

We were expecting a thunder storm tonight so we were hoping we wouldn't be stuck in a downpour. We made it back to the car before any rain fell. It was a nice evening.