Hiking In Asheville

Today Rachael and I set out to do a hike so we went to the Bent Creek Experimental Forest.  We chose a trail to hike but it seemed difficult to get to.  The scenery was beautiful, but the trails were not marked well and we got lost.  We started hiking at 11am and finally made it back to our car at about 5:30pm !  All told we hiked about 14.5 miles.  We felt pretty good about the fact that the trail that was marked as the most difficult was pretty easy for us compared with other trails we have hiked.  While we were hiking we met a young man who was working on his doctoral thesis. He was doing a study on a certain fungus that attacks trees in NC.  We also had 3 people ask to take their picture in front of our car !  And, when asked why we wrote what we did on the back, we told them we were going on a 6 week jaunt across the country and a few even asked for my blog address… Needless to say, we got a great workout but the worst part of the whole thing was the gnats !  Several flew right into Rachael’s eyes and I had to help her get them out !  We were exhausted and still about 2 miles from our car when a couple in a large SUV asked if we needed a ride to our car.  We were never so happy to see a car as we were then !   We went back to the hotel, showered, went to a Greek restaurant and now, it’s off to bed…. Pictures can be found at:  https://plus.google.com/photos/104423898538711271791/albums/5755923141739814401?authkey=CMeFxt3ItcSfJA