Climbing A Mountain

On our last full day in Virginia we decided to have an outdoor adventure and climb a mountain. Old Rag was our destination and this time we were determined to enjoy the views! The last time we conquered this mountain it was rainy and foggy and when we got to the top we were literally hiking through the clouds. Kinda cool but it left us with a desire to find out what we had been missing. Memorial Day dawned sunny, warm and clear...the perfect day for mountain climbing so Arizona, Aly, and I set out for our adventure in the country.

About half way up the mountain we met this dog. He was jumping from rock to rock and just having a grand ol' time! Apparently he heads up the mountain fairly often...

One of my favorite things about this hike is the rock climbing. After a few miles of fairly steep switchbacks, the trail and terrain change quite dramatically. The "trail" is simply blue arrows painted on the sides and tops of boulders. It's pretty sweet and also...

fairly exhausting!

But we prevailed and made it to the top and of course had to take a bunch of pictures!

PS Mom maybe you better not look at this one...I wasn't doing a very good job of "staying away from the edge"

After enjoying the views for awhile (they were infinitely better than last time) we headed back down. The way down was quite a bit easier and more relaxing and it was nice to be able to talk to each other without gasping for breath.

Sweet success!

That night the only thing we could muster up enough energy for was a trip to our favorite Chinese restaurant ( you know it's authentic when the receipt that the order was written on is written in Chinese.) Phoenix has a lot of good Mexican food restaurants but we have yet to find a good Chinese place, so needless to say we had been looking forward to eating at Tau Tau for months! It was a great way to end our trip! Thanks again to everyone for making time to see us and for making our trip so wonderful!