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Hiking Strickler Knob

A little video of what we were up to this past Saturday.  Good times hiking, exploring, swimming, and having dinner at Moms' place.  The hike was to Stickler Knob in the George Washington National Forest.  It is a rock out cropping that overlooks the Shenandoah Valley between Luray and New Market, VA.  So the view is pretty spectacular as you are sitting up on the Massanutten Ridge looking up and down the Shenandoah Valley with the Shenandoah National Park in the distance.  Its a great hike.  About six miles if you do it right.  Over nine miles if you follow the directions on Hiking Upwards.

Honeymoon in Iceland

I put together a little montage video of our honeymoon in Iceland!  Very cool place.  I want to go back ASAP.  The short story is that we rented a van that had been modified so that it had two seats up front and then the whole back was a bed with storage areas underneath of it.  We spent 10 days on the road, drove over 2,000 miles, and saw a lot of stuff.  Went on some big hikes and had a great time.

Winter Wonderland

Well I guess its time for my annual update.  Maybe I'll get in the habit of posting more, but I'm not counting on it.  This is a photo from yesterday skinning up through the woods at White Grass in Davis, WV.  Getting a training day in before the trip out to British Columbia.

I should have been posting all year!  Boy, have you all missed out!  I've gone to Russia, white water rafted in the New River, ran two marathons, gone to Savannah a couple times, hiked all over the Blue Ridge, went to see a friend BASE jump at Bridge Day, redone my motorcycle, went to a monster truck show, cooked lots of great food, been sailing a bunch, gone deep water soloing, among other great outings.  So, many good photos... oh well, maybe I'll post some this year.  

This Time Last Year

Well, this time last year Chad and I were driving back from a road trip down South to see Steve in Alabama.  Now I'm back at SJ Morse, Chad is working at The Inn and Steve is flying Blackhawks in Afghanistan.  A lot has changed and not much has changed.  Now that I'm working a desk job again, I'm going to make an effort to get back to updating this thing on a regular basis.  I've gotten tired of Facebook, so I'm switching gears and going back to the way they did it in the good old days; blogging.  See ya soon.

Last Day of Summer

Went down to Dad's house on the Potomac for one last day on the Hobie Cat.  The weather was warm and sunny and the wind was just right.  We sailed thirteen miles to St. Clement's Island and walked through the newly finished lighthouse, an exact replica of the original which was destroyed in the 1950's.   That's all I have to say about that.  I haven't been posting on here in a long time, I've been thinking that I may start throwing something up more often, we'll see.

A Southern Drive

Steve standing under an Ancient Live Oak on our drive down to Orange Beach.

With the New Year ringing in some changes I decided to put down my pizza peel and head south to visit Steve at Fort Rucker, AL.  Chad was free for the week so we packed up the old RSX and hit the road with dreams of mountains and beaches on our minds.

However, in southern Virginia as we drove high into the mountains of the states plateau the temperature plummeted and the weather took turn for the worse.  Bridges were covered in a sheet of ice and cars spun off to the sides left and right.  The road became hidden under snow and ice and we began to accept the notion that if we did not slide into a ditch, traffic would certainly be blocked and either way we would be spending the night on the side of a desolate highway in a freak snow storm.  Fortuna had other plans, and we were able to keep moving at five to ten miles an hour (if we had stopped at any point regaining forward momentum would have not been possible).  We passed around fifty car accidents and very narrowly escaped being mowed over by an oncoming tractor trailer that jack knifed and plowed through the median.  Some how we made it to Charlotte.  We got dinner with my Grandmother and got a good nights rest, weary from the white knuckled driving.

After a tour of Charlotte we headed out to the Smokeys with our sights on hiking Mt. Mitchell, the highest peak in the east.  But snow on the Parkway kept the peak at bay.  After driving all over the valleys in a bitter cold we ended up in Hot Springs, NC and got a camping site and prepared for the freezing night ahead (temps were around 11 degrees).  A soak in the redneck spa at the hot springs and a few libations from the local watering hole got us in sleep mode.  The next day we headed south to see if we could climb Laurel Knob, the largest rock out cropping east of the Mississippi with climbs over 1,400 feet high.   Again cold temps and snow prevented us from climbing, so we went for a hike trying to get to the base of the cliffs.  Bad directions and a incomplete map got us off miles in woods far from our goal.  We hiked back out, made couple pb&j's and hit the road.

Throwing in the climbing towel, we headed down south and got a hotel in Auburn, Al.  In the morning we went for a long run around the town of Auburn and the campus, which in early January is more or less a ghost town.  Got some great BBQ at Byron's Smokehouse and drove off in search of Alabama's only sport climbing crag.  It was small, glorified bouldering really, Chad knocked out the State's hardest route and we got back in the car and pointed south towards Dothan.  We arrived late in the afternoon.  Hung out with Steve for a bit and went to sleep.

Early the next morning Chad and I headed down through three hours of foggy roads to the Gulf Coast, Apalachiacola to be exact.  We had some great oysters on the water and walked around town for a while before crossing the bridge over to Saint George Island.  We walked around on the beach, went for a swim in the freezing waters and fought off a wave of black flies until we retreated for the car.

The next morning Steve was off duty for the weekend and we all headed down to Orange Beach to stay with the Buckleys.  Mr. Buckley took the three of us and his guide, for lack of a better term, Curtis and one of Curtis's friends out into the Gulf of a bit of fishing.  We thought we would just be out for a couple few hours, but Curtis had other plans and decided to go all the way and take the boat out as far as it could go and so we endured three hours and forty minutes of banging into waves and skirting thunderstorms to reach "the beer can" a large oil rig seventy miles out in the Gulf.  We arrived just before sundown and threw our lines to the waves.  Steve caught a huge four foot Mahi Mahi right off the bat.  We had more luck over the next few hours scoring yellow and black fin tuna.  After the gas tank hit the half way mark and the last of the ruff necks watching us from high on the oil rig had turned in we pulled the lines and set a course back to Orange Bech.  The sea became more calm and the trip back to land was quite a bit smoother, with the boat only occasionally bouncing off the waves at queer angle that made you wonder "wear are the life vests?

The next morning we headed back to Fort Rucker, stopping at the Ponce de Leone springs for a birthday swim in the "fountain of youth".  Back at base I cooked up a dinner with the Mahi Mahi that Steve had caught and we all sat around the fire drinking Imperials and declaring the weekend a success.

The trip back home went smoothly with a layover in Winston-Salem with Marshall.  Good times being shown around the city and then the next day it was back home and back to reality.  It was great trip and a much needed break from the cabin fever that living in Rapp can produce, especially in the winter.

A map of the route we took.  A little over 2,700 miles.

Crossing an icy creek while trying to get to Laurel Knob.  Cold stuff!

Scenes from Saint George Island.

Great food!  Raw oysters and Crab Bisque on the water in Apalachiacola and BBQ at Byron's Smokehouse in Auburn.

Steve's twenty five pound Mahi Mahi.

Chad's Mahi Mahi.  I only managed to catch a four foot shark.

The S.S. Buckley and the "Beer Can" oil rig.

Sunset with no land in sight.

The three amigos

The "Fountian of Youth", Carolina Dogs at PB's in Winston-Salem and one more shot of the rig.

Matterhorn

On August Friday the 12th Chad and climbed the Matterhorn! It was awesome, a great adventure! I'll post some more about it and photos from the trip soon...

July

Well its been a while since I've posted on here - I've got to try post more often on here. These are a couple of storm photos that I took recently. We have had quite a few powerful thunderstorms this summer. Hopefully I'll be able to get some more soon and with the heat levels the past few days its looking good. Steve just came back for a visit - it was too short - but we had some good times over the past week! Hoping to do a road trip down to Alabama soon to see him.

Rainahannock

The past week has brought some of the largest flooding we've had around here since '96. Too bad I had to work during the storm or I would have some better photos of the hollows; which got hit pretty hard. Wish I could have been up on Devil's Staircase or White Oak Canyon, when the flooding was at peak. Flowers are coming up all around the house. My lawn is growing faster than I would like it to... I should probably cut it again today. Took Jack up Cedar Run yesterday, he had a great time crossing the flooding river.

Over Sperryville

Yesterday Chad I went up Oventop Mountain to do some climbing. The view from the top is really superb, I have no idea why the SNP closed the trail, it overlooks both Sperryville and Old Hollow. Really the best view of Sperryville I've seen. While rappin' down the cliff we came across a raven's nest with five eggs in it. Pretty cool, the eggs were larger than I would have thought and I hadn't had breakfast... but we left them alone on account of preservation and no skillet on hand.

Fire and Ice

Its been a long cold winter, I can't wait for spring. Dry conditions and high winds started a few forest fires in the Shenandoah National Park last week. This photo was taken on 522 near the Wakefield School.