Yesterday Dan and I went on a hike off of Skyline Drive to Little Calf Mountain. It was really short and pretty easy - just a little steep on the way up. Unfortunately, our camera batteries died so we didn't get any pictures. But the good news is that we got into the park free because it was National Public Land Day! Who knew?

So since we don't have any pictures, here are some from when we drove up the Blue Ridge Parkway to watch the sunset a week or so ago.

And last weekend we went to the Farmer's Market so here's a shot of some peppers. There was a guy there selling pictures and he had a beautiful one of Delicate Arch at Arches National Park, but it was too expensive.

And here is one of only 3 pictures I shot while in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It's such a cute little town but the stoplights take forever and were driving me nuts!

Speaking of nuts, I once rode the bus in Utah to go to Wal-mart or something and the bus driver was hysterical. At first, I thought everything was normal. Then the driver turns to this guy who's sitting in the front row and says, "Excuse me, have you seen any squirrels around here?" The man tried his hardest to ignore the driver... "Have you seen any squirrels around here???" The man finally responded, "Uh... no. Why?" And then the bus driver, in this crazed maniacal voice says, "Because they're after me! They think I'm nuts!" I was laughing SO hard.

Anyway, that's about it from here. I'm supposed to take my sister's engagement pictures this week. I'm a little nervous about that. Hopefully they won't turn out as badly as these:

Boo. Boo airports. So I had to leave this morning for a business trip to Bowling Green, Kentucky. Only problem is the Bowling Green doesn't have a commercial airport. So I booked a flight from Charlottesville to Nashville through Charlotte. Then I was going to rent a car to drive up to Bowling Green. I was supposed to get in to Bowling Green around 3:30. It's now 4:30 and I'm stuck in Charlotte because my second flight got canceled after we sat on the tarmac for two hours. So now, the earliest flight I can get to Nashville leaves here at 7:45 and I won't get in to Bowling Green until around 11. Sweeeet. Boo airports. I'll write a more chipper post later.

WayneLanes - bring it on.Today is our fabulous friend Sarah's birthday so yesterday, a group of us went and got our bowl on down at WayneLanes in Waynesboro, Virginia. Dan and I had tried to go to WayneLanes before, but realized once we got there that there was a tournament going on and the alley was pretty much booked for the rest of the day. Not to mention, it was so smokey that you couldn't see from one end of the room to the other. But alas, it was Sarah's birthday so we thought we'd give it another try. When we got there, we noticed that they have been smoke-free since August! We were pretty excited.

Bowling was a lot of fun. I just wish I were good at it. Our camera batteries died right as the party was getting started, so here are some of the shots we got before our camera gave out...

The sweet smell of success. I think Dan got 105 or something.

The agony of defeat. (She actually did really well. I just thought this picture was good.)

Thank you, WayneLanes. Thank you.

WHITE ROCK FALLS TRAIL

Well, despite the fact that no one publicly said they wanted to accompany us on our next outdoor excursion, we got three brave souls to join us on today's adventure - White Rock Falls Trail. The falls were described in our brochure as "40 foot White Rock Falls set in a spectacular hemlock shaded rock grotto." Well, we were pretty excited about that 40-foot waterfall... until we saw it!

But wait, you ask... where's the water? Let's take a closer look.
Oh, yeah. So needless to say, we (we mostly meaning Dan) were pretty bummed that there wasn't enough water to go playing around in, not to mention jumping in. So we climbed around on the rocks a bit, ate grapes, and Katy painted a beautiful watercolor. Although the "falls" weren't what we expected, I thought the hike was really pretty. On the drive up we also saw plenty of deer and squirrels. It was nice to get out and enjoy the great weather! Thanks to Katy and the Menssens for keeping us company. It was a lot of fun.

Katy climbing.

Dan the whitey between Kimber and Mike.

My little sister and her boyfriend are officially engaged! Yay!

Kristen and I are planning on going on a hike this Saturday morning. Right now, we're looking at leaving around 7: 30 or 8 a.m. and going on the White Rock Falls Trail. It looks like it's probably a 45 minute drive from C'ville, and it's a 1.7 mile hike, each way (3.4 miles total). The information we have says that it goes by (maybe through?) a couple stream valleys to a couple groups of falls, one of which is 40 feet. Nothing says there are good swimming holes, but if there are, I'll probably stop at them for a little while. This brochure does say it's "great for kids, but there are several dangerous drop-offs." Let us know if you're interested in going this Saturday morning!

So Kristen and I have decided that we're going to go on hikes more frequently this year. Thanks to a tip from Katy (this is where I'd insert a link to Aaron and Katy's blog, if I knew what the heck I was doing), we picked up a brochure on 15 cool hikes within a short drive of Charlottesville from that outdoor store in Barracks.

Today, we hiked the St. Mary's River trail. It's about an hour hike each way, 2.5 miles, to the waterfall.

So we got there, and above the falls, we ran into some local kids who said you could jump off a ledge into a pool by the waterfall. These kids were diving head first off another rock, probably 8 feet down, into a gap about 4 feet wide. They were crazy, but it did look fun. So here's a picture of the place by the waterfall that they recommended we go check out.

It didn't look too bad from down below in the water.

But it looked pretty bad once I got to the top. It was hard to see where the edges were, it was only about 8 feet deep in the deepest spot, and it felt pretty high when I started looking down. After 15 tense minutes of contemplation, with onlookers saying things like "do it," "don't do it," and "I'm not stupid enough to do it," and with Kristen looking at me like it might be our last moment together, the situation ended anticlimactically with me going back down. The long way. I missed having Kristen's brother, Kirk, there to jump first, just to convince me that I probably wouldn't seriously hurt myself.

So if anyone else wants to go jump first sometime, hopefully it would help me work up the guts to go too. Or, if you're just interested in going on one of our future hikes with us, let us know.