Happy Campers

So, here we go comp hours – just like I promised you. Sizzle your little hearts out – because you are officially ashes! We had a fantastic time! Very relaxing, very serene, very simple, very peaceful, very fun, very exciting, and very – EVERYTHING A CAMPING TRIP IS MEANT TO BE!! :-) And guess who our honored guest was. Hattie. That’s right! Hattie Jane Matthews. She is an adventuresome little girl and she loves to be outdoors! But she doesn’t like to be away from her mommy. I figure that there are many vacations I will want to go on, when it is just not feasible to take her along. But this one – well, it was perfect for her. And yeah… it was a little bit of trouble here and there, but really almost none and it was so worth it. To see her running her little heart out to stay with K and I out on the mountain bike trails was good for my soul. And good for her heart and lungs! When we arrived at the Tsali campground we started unloading. K setup our tent, we put on our mtb shoes and decided we’d take Hattie on her first trail adventure. We headed for the right loop and she went 3 miles with us! I think I was more excited that she was going than she was! I am a real fool for this dog if you can’t tell :-/ We got everything settled in and got plenty of firewood gathered up for the night and we cooked “Campfire spaghetti.” We weren’t sure if the spaghetti was really just THAT much better than spaghetti you cook at home or if we were just so starved by the time it finally got done that it seemed better. Nevertheless, we both had a big plate of spaghetti and garlic texas toast. Who counts calories on a camping trip? Not I! We cleaned up our mess, grabbed a cold one …. Or two…. Or three….and kicked back in our chairs around the fire. The temperature/weather could not have been more appropriate. Mid-70’s during the day and mid 50’s at night. We got out our deck of cards and played a few hands of black jack and K gave me some poker lessons. Then it was Smores time! We got out the goods. We toasted marshmallows in the fire and wrapped hershey’s chocolate and graham crackers around it and gave it a good SMOOSH and whatta ya know ladies and gentlemen – it’s a homemade fan-damn-TASTIC SMORE! I was in heaven! Those things are off the freakin HOOK! And they literally get all over your face no matter how hard you try not to. You can only imagine – I am not shy when it comes to chocolate :-) Around 9:30 K and I decided it was getting close to time to turn it in and there were some bathroom issues to be dealt with. Ya know… I needed to wash my face, put my contacts in their solution, moisturize, etc…. and take care of bizness on the potty. Well K walked up to the bath house first and I wasn’t paying much attention but for some reason – assumed the womens bathroom was the door on the left and the mens was the door on the right. So I be-bopped on into the left door only to see that my 1 bathroom stall was occupied. Bummer…. Cause Holly Jane had to GO. That campfire spaghetti and smores was not going to hang out for much longer. Well hell…. Whatta ya do? Wait it out. So I pranced through there again to make sure there really was no other stall while I had my little “bath bag” with towels and wash cloths, soap, contact solution etc…. on my shoulder and all of the sudden the poor lady who had my stall occupied had a major TNT fiasco!!! If you need a definition of TNT, please refer to Lana’s blog for details. We are talking – she let the hammer down. And I squinted my face out of embarrassment for her and promised myself really quick I would not let out a single giggle and pretend I never heard it. About 4 seconds later I hear “Holly – you’re in the wrong bathroom” I jumped – still with my little bath bag on my shoulder. “huh?” I say very proper-like. “You’re in the men’s.” And it’s K. And I say “IS THAT YOU?!!!!????!!!” and he dies laughing and says “yes” and I say “Well, there IS a urinal in here. Hang on – let me go check." So I go look at the sign on the door again and sure enough – it was a boy with pants on. No girl with a skirt. Oh geez…. So after laughing so hard that we were both nearly in tears, I took my little bath bag next door and took care of bizness and all that other cosmetic stuff. Back to the campsite and soon enough we were all 3 in the tent. Yep, I said all 3 :-) Hattie is a bit spoiled, but I love her anyways. Saturday morning we got up and K had the bacon sizzling and I scrambled the eggs. We had a wonderful breakfast and it’s so cool to cook outdoors in the wilderness. And to pull it all off!! It’s awesome. So we got our bellies full and put on our riding gear. Off we go to the Thompson loop. This was about a 9 mile loop and it got my heart pumping! I am a nervous mountain biker anyways – but I haven’t been back on that thing since our Oak Mountain trip in May. So I was a bit squirely….. and I forgot my knee pads. No big deal though – I never needed them the entire weekend. Never crashed. K is a phenomenal mountain biker. This guy is loaded with zen. If I could look and feel half as comfortable as he is on the bike, we’d be in bizness. The more technical the trail, the better he rides. For me – I am the opposite. I like a nice, smooth single track where I can relax and concentrate on power. After the first loop, we headed back to the campsite to check on Hattie. She was there – waiting with tear stains all over her face. We busted out the hotdogs and roasted them on the fire for a little lunch snack, then we decided to hit it again – the Mouse loop is next. It was around 8 miles. We ran up on a couple of girls who had mechanical problems with a chain and of course K was the good Samaritan by taking the chain apart and putting it back together for them so they could continue on without pushing the bike for another 3 miles. So, we finished strong on this loop knowing we were done for the day and I followed K down a pretty big drop off back to the campsite. I really could not believe I had the guts to plunge in like that, but I thought “Well the worst that can happen is I’ll definitely crash on my face and I will at least be giving it a shot. “ I didn’t crash though – I stood up and leaned way back over my back tire, dragged my brakes pretty hard and held my balance to the bottom. What a rush of adrenaline!! Back to the bath house for a shower – this time things went a bit smoother and if there were any TNT episodes I never knew about them! LOL. Back to the campsite for some dinner! Wow, this was a lot of eating. No wonder I feel 10lb heavier! The menu for Saturday night read – Grilled chicken marinated in Italian, wild herb rice & some good ole Texas toast with a cold mich ultra! Another fabulous meal prepared by two happy campers – for sure! We were down 16 miles for mtb’ing and our appetites were hearty! Since it was Saturday, guess what that means. At “Camp-H&K” Saturday night means it’s double chocolate night! Get out the graham crackers, the marshmallows and pull double Hershey bars – it’s going to be decadant! We roasted smores and doubled up on the chocolate. Guys – I ate 3. With double chocolate! LOL. Well heck – if you can’t live on the edge when you’re camping, when can you? K had pure entertainment sitting there watching me eat them all. It wasn’t long after the Smores contest and it was bed-time. Tent-time. Till the sun rose the next morning. We got up, packed almost everything in the vehicle and headed over to the Nantahala river and had breakfast at a very neat little restaurant overlooking the river that we ate at last time we were in that neck of woods. We also shopped around a little in the NOC and got some killer deals on some t-shirts. We headed back to Tsali to the campsite, got on our riding gear and took off for our final ride before departing and heading back to good ol Tennessee. We rode the Right Loop, which is the race course. We didn’t do the entire loop because we were running low on time and knew we’d be on the road the rest of the afternoon. But we did get in around 8.5 miles. It was on this loop that there was about a 4ft black racer snake hanging out in the middle of the trail. Ewww…. We both hate snakes. This loop had beautiful views on Fontanna Lake. This lake looked like a tropical carribean destination. It was turquoise and clear. Very cool. We finished her up and got changed and headed west to get back home around 5pm Sunday night. This was a vacation well worth taking. It was just about 2 days too short. And happy campers we are :-) Yesterday I knew I had to do something about the massive amount of smores I ate over the weekend so I met Lana for a 6 mile run at lunch that pushed me to the max!!! Total time- 53:53. I hadn’t run in a week! I did finally get to try out my new Mizuno Wave Nirvana 4’s and they felt great!! You never realize how bad you need new running shoes until you finally get them. Today I did an 18 mile lunch ride with Lana. I really needed more than that to try and prepare for LOL.