Modern man is a wimp...

Hello again, loyal readers (all three of you - or so). Apologies for being the absolute worst at following through on daily updates. This time, though, my excuse that I was too busy having a non adventure (the previously discussed television watching) but instead having an actual adventure, exploring the outdoors and building fires and sleeping on the ground and all that good stuff. (Admittedly, some television watching was involved; Arrested Development came out Sunday, plus I had to watch the season finale of Smash.)

So here it goes, the first of Ellie's actual daily adventures. Buckle your seat belts for some awesomeness - we all know how good I am at telling stories. (Explanation for the random people of the Internet who will discover this blog: I am often mocked for my poor story telling ability. Maybe one of my adventures will involve buffalo wings and you'll get to hear my greatest story ever to judge for yourself.)

After a Saturday that consisted largely of napping, with moderate car maintenance and occasional partying, my wonderful boyfriend and I set out for a hard core camping trip. That's a bit of a misnomer, as our trip did not really fall into the category of "hard core" as defined by said boyfriend, who originally suggested we carry all our belongings, camp on top of a mountain, and not even get to make s'mores. CAMPING IS NOT CAMPING WITHOUT S'MORES.

Luckily, he relented and reserved us a real camp site at the base of Sharp Top, one of the mountains in the Peaks of Otter. I've mentioned before that I live in a really beautiful areasee for yourself:

 So after arriving and pitching our tent (I helped a lot, I swear), we headed up Sharp Top. Determined not to give up on a full-on hard core adventure, Barrett (the aforementioned boyfriend), carried a 40 pound pack and went up the mountain looking like this:

Note how much he loves America; he really got into the Memorial Day spirit.

Sharp Top is a difficult hike, but one I've done many a time in the nine or so months I've lived in Lynchburg. Yes, there were times I felt like I was going to die, but we made it without too much trouble or embarrassment (and after encountering a white German Shepherd, which may or may not have secretly been a wolf. It was awesome, despite my general intense fear of dogs).

Here's some pretty sweet views from the top. In a few you can see the crazy teenagers making bad decisions that paralyzed me with fear, even though I wasn't even the one perched on top of rocks:

This would be fodder for some pithy thoughts or thoughtful reflections, but this blog post is already super long and you've all probably lost interest by now. My life is really not that exciting - but it's important you know I'm very uncomfortable with people doing crazy dangerous things in my vicinity. I am also very uncomfortable with bees, and dogs, and knives, and...I should probably just get back to our adventure.

Upon returning to the campsite, we split duties up along gender lines: I peeled potatoes and prepared some sweet tinfoil dinners (this involved some terrifying knife interactions, but I overcame) while Barrett used his Eagle Scout skillzzz (check out that gangsta spelling) to build us a fire. Serenaded by the sounds of dozens and dozens of motorcycles, we enjoyed some kick-ass tinfoil dinners, made s'mores (a key component of camping, as mentioned above) and pondered the point of camping.

It's weird, isn't it? Choosing to eschew all modern conveniences and force ourselves to work annoyingly hard for warmth, light, food, all that good stuff. Modern man has evolved and invented to move past camping, and yet, we turn to it as a fun, "relaxing" activity.

Barrett's response was something along the lines of the title of this entry, highlighting the wimpiness of modern man. A fair point, but I think the real answer is far simpler: s'mores are the best.

Anywho, we awoke with the sun (or rather, several hours after the sun) Monday morning, and set out to make some bacon for breakfast.

It did not go well. In the effort of educating my readership, here's a tip: if you're attempting to make bacon over a fire using tinfoil, be sure to wrap the bacon in enough layers of tinfoil that you avoid the fire finding its way into the tinfoil packet, setting the bacon grease on fire, and resulting in bacon so char-grilled it is literally nonexistent. It was a tough blow - I really like bacon.

But we powered through, and with delicious protein bars and apples to satiate us, packed up camp (once again, I helped SO MUCH) and headed over to Flat Top for a second hike.

Now, Sharp Top is not an easy hike. It takes about an hour and a half to two hours, involves a lot of very steep climbing and finding your way up some lengthy rock patches with unsure footing while simultaneously avoiding the hoards of people and dogs who had the exact same idea as you.

We did not face that last problem on Flat Top, which seems to be the much less popular of the two hikes. Perhaps that it is because it is THE WORST THING EVER. The trail is 2.6 miles to the top, gradually uphill seemingly forever. It is beautiful, a more undisturbed trail with gorgeous flora and fauna and all that good stuff. But, seriously, it goes on FOREVER.

When we finally made it to the top, I was a bit disappointed to find the summit populated largely by trees without anything close to the breathtaking 360 views of Sharp Top. (Also it started raining literally the moment we reached the summit. God was not a fan of our efforts to hike that mountain.) It seems as though if we'd explored we'd have found some more good viewing spots, but the only photo I took once I reached the top was this one:

In case anyone dare doubt us.

After a slightly less grueling but still exhausting return trip down the mountain, we finally made it back to the car and returned to civilization. To celebrate our toughness, we went for a very late lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings.

I have to say, there's only one time where I've enjoyed buffalo wings more. But that's a story for another day.



p.s. Also, we saw this sweet deer at the top of Sharp Top. Just chilling. No fear of man. It was pretty awesome, and I totally kept my cool and was not at all terrified (the same cannot be said for the bee we encountered at the summit).