Wow. My legs and feet hurt a lot. Three blisters total; and two of them are on one toe.
Yesterday we had the final closing party for the junor high OWL from our church. That means that I now have more spare time. I'm really glad that I got the chance to teach this class because I think it's very important, and we had a great group this year.
Today I drove to Cookeville and met up with Doug to go hiking. On I-40, near Carthage, there were thousands and thousands of butterflies. I must have hit at least ten of them.
Anyway, Shannon had planned to go hiking with us, but he wasn't feeling well. We went over to Scott's Gulf in White County, and hiked up to Virgin Falls.
It was a pretty rough hike for my poor little feet. I haven't been hiking in quite some time, and they took a beating. The fact that we decided to take the river bed back instead of the trail didn't help things as we walked on round rocks that were just on top of more round rocks.
The hike in wasn't too bad, aside from a few people driving ATV's around, and the huge mud puddles on the trail.
About two thirds of the way in, at the second river crossing, there was actually water in the riverbed*. We considered going acoss and just getting wet, but we decided to see if there was a better place downstream. There didn't seem to be, at first, until we noticed a spot about 100 yards away where the water just went into a hole in the ground*. We climbed over it there, and went on our merry way. Note: for reference, those two pics were taken from the same spot.
We went a bit further than we had to, just to make sure we were taking the right side trail, and ended up at the third river crossing*. It was very pretty, so we took a little break to enjoy the view.
After we were sure, we went up to Virgin Falls. Near the falls I saw a cute centipede*. The falls* are very pretty and we took a little snack break to admire the view before we started back for the car.
The neat thing about Virgin Falls is that the water comes out of the ground at the top, falls over the rocks, and then goes back into a hole in the ground at the bottom.
Aside from the little alteration in our return path, things went smoothly. We both got back without major injury, and we went back to Cookeville. We had dinner at Spankies with Shannon, and then I came back home.
* links to pictures I took
Malachi B-J Brown malachus+spencerandbrown@gmail.com
