Catoctin Mountain and Spices

Couldn't resist this totally vintage picture I found searching "Catoctin Mountain" on google images. It screams, "Hey KIDS! Respect your National Parks and don't start forrest fires!" Anyway that picture is where I ate lunch on my hike on Saturday. I found the hike in my 60 hikes in 60 Miles of Washington DC book and it was perfect! Catoctin Mountain is out near Frederick, Maryland - so a good hour and 15 mins or so from DC. The trail I took was actually a bunch of various trails combined to make a 9 mile loop back to the visitors center. I saw a waterfall, three or four vistas, and even a deer. The trail was busy enough where I didn't feel unsafe (I was alone) but not overcrowded to the point of not having any solitude. This part of the country is just so beautiful - and in a very different way than California.

I had been craving good sushi for awhile so Saturday night I went to a great spot called Spices up in Cleveland Park with Lauren, Remi, Anna, and Anna's roommate Dustin/Dylan (I never got it right the whole night... whoops). Anyway I definitely got my sushi fix for awhile. Highly recommend the restaurant.

Sunday - Nats Game with Patrick, Bobby, and David (thank you AIR!); REI run with Patrick to get him a GPS run tracking thing followed by reading at Caribou; and Gone Baby Gone movie night. Gone Baby Gone was really... complicated. I liked it. Any plot that circles around gray area ethics has good potential to keep me interested.

Now back to work for a few days, then MADISON!

Buzzard Hill Hike

Last Saturday morning Shane, Lauren, Sweeting and I drove out to the Virginia/West Virginia border to hike a part of the Appalachian Trail called Buzzard Hill. It's about a 9.0 mile trek, 4 difficulty, 3,020 feet elevation gain. We went early so we'd beat the weather and were expecting thunderstorms in the late afternoon. So we're hiking along and I'm semi-keeping up. Shane is a speed demon and I'm out of shape soooooooooo that was not the best match up. I was holding my own until a ridiculous grade just zapped my energy. It was hard! The trail was rocky and steep! I kept going, but had the other three go ahead so I could go at my own pace. SO we end up agreeing they will continue and I'll start going back (we were almost to the end and I wanted a head start). Well at about 2:00pm or so I'm guessing, I start hearing thunder... and the woods start getting very very dark... and the wind starts howling. Pretty soon there is incredibly intense lightning, thunder, and ultimately a complete flood of rain. I'm like OH. MY. GOD. Haha it was seriously kind of scary! So I'm just saying to myself... Carrie, keep moving! Meanwhile a few Appalachian Trail hikers are speeding by me with their high tech boots and hiker poles and ponchos and are asking me if I'm okay and have everything I need. I look down at my gym clothes and sneakers and little dinky $10 Reebok backpack (if you can even call it that). Mmm hmm. Yep. Doing just fine! An hour and a half later, the storm subsides and I make it back to the lookout to wait for Shane, Lauren, and Sweeting to catch up. They do a bit later and get this... so Lauren grabbed for a tree to steady herself as she was going down hill. She saw a flash of light go into her hand and her arm went numb for a few minutes! We think that tree was about to get hit by lightning and she took the counter charge out of the tree! CRAZY! We saw a fallen tree on the way down to the parking lot that had a full bolt of lightning go straight through the trunk. It wasn't split or anything, just straight through from the top to bottom. Weird. Anyway we made it home and took long hot showers... we were pretty gross!

Sunday was ANOTHER concert at Nissan. Tim McGraw -- beautiful day, great weather, fun time with friends. We have a couple weeks break now until Brad Paisley.