Forced March

Amanda and I have this habit of getting ourselves into long walks when we are on vacation. Back in California we camped for a night in Mendocino and ended up taking a long hike in our sandals. We didn't mean to, but we just kept going. The problem was that our feet were so tender afterwards that we couldn't walk on them for the rest of the evening. That made camping tough.

We had something similar happen in Rome, though at least I had decent shoes on for that. I have no idea how much we walked, but it wasn't a trivial distance by the time we were done.

We did it again yesterday. Our B&B gave us one of those tourist maps that has sort of a cartoonish look to it. We made the mistake of thinking that it had any kind of scale. As a result we ended up walking between 7 and 8 miles in our sandals. The difference between this and Rome is that Asheville is full of hills. It's not like we just had to go down one hill and we were there. We were up and down a bunch of times.

The good news is that we had a nice tea at the farthest point of the walk. We made it back to the B&B, enjoyed a glass of wine and some time on the hammock as well as the porch swing, and then put on our running shoes to walk back out for dinner. That made things a lot easier.

We're going rafting today. The original plan was for the French Broad river, but it is mostly dry now with the drought in this area. Instead it looks like we are going to the Volunteer state to ride on the Watauga River.

So far this has been a great trip. Thanks again Bill & Tiff!