                           
Back at the falls. I went with an old friend, LeAnne, who I hadn't seen in around 8 years. The parking lot was full of daypackers, campers, and rescue crew (they were practicing rope use according to another camper). We met a few cool people and had a great time. We did the full loop, which was a first for me.
I'll be linking here shortly to a map with trail data and pictures included on it.
          
I am sunburned, poison ivy-ed, foot blistered, cut, scratched, and bruised all over. This was the best weekend ever! We hiked around 10 miles, climbed up two mountains (Whitetop and Stone Mountain), and I collected about 30 lbs worth of rocks.
I'll try and have some of the scenic, and personal interest pictures up in the next week. As for now, I'm putting together my field notebook, compiling, sorting, a beautifying data. I can't help but think of this as a scrap-booking project.
It's my plan that I will go hiking or biking every day this summer that I'm not at work. If you're interested please let me know, I'll likely want some company.
                   
It rained all day today. It thunderstormed. I kept my camera working through most of the trip, but at the final falls (pictures 17 and 18), I had nothing dry left to wipe the fog from my camera lens. Picture 17 is of the chasm that the falls poured into. I couldn't get an angle on it because it was too deep (~250 ft).
It was a great hike. Bennett, Eric, and Stubs went with me.
Work and school, little to no social life.
My downstairs neighbor has decided that he doesn't like me having my friends over. And I'm somewhat sympathetic to him. Except that he is an asshole. And he doesn't actually live here (he's staying with his girlfriend, or so the rumors say). I have been considering terminating my Friday night games as a result. And that's unfortunate, because we've been having a lot of fun.
In other news, I got a Magellan eXplorist 500 LE GPS. I'll be using it for various web projects here and there, expect to see more interactive maps. I also got a mountain bike, a Trek 4300. I'm trying to get my legs back in shape so that I can do some more serious riding. But Tennessee is a hard place to ride bikes, many hills. Fun to go down, hard to come back up.
The semester will soon be over, and I'll have the summer off to have fun and go places. I have a tentative hit list of locations I want to hike, bike, map and photograph. I am going to try to get a regular schedule that way I can designate hike days well in advance, that way I can perhaps get more friends to go hike with me.
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