To read part one of day two, click here.

We hiked out from our campsite in good moods, ready to start our adventure. We hiked for about two minutes, and then we were at a road that we had to cross. We all lined up along the edge of the road, with Jen and Katie at the ends of the line. Jen and Katie called out “Clear!” after checking for cars, and we moved across the road in a line.

Then we started walking up the trail that was there, if you could call it a trail. It was more like a deer path. And it had a pretty good elevation change – I don’t remember what it was, but it was pretty steep! I was up close to the front – I think Bruce and Jen were the only two in front of me. We had not gotten far when we heard the first “Red Light!” of the trip.

This time it was because Jordann had fallen, and she was laughing so hard she could not get back up! She managed to get back up, and we started back up the trail.

I have no idea how far that first section of the trail was, but it seemed pretty far to me! I tried to just keep up, and I think I did a pretty good job of it. I only got caught on the thorns once, and I was able to get myself unstuck and catch back up to Bruce.

We reached the top of that little trail where it started going along the Blue Ridge Parkway. There was a huge retaining wall (it was way over my head)to our left, and a pretty steep hill to our right. So we stuck pretty close to the wall until it dropped down to probably about 2-3 feet tall. Then we climbed over it – at least, everyone else did. I got pulled over it. 😀

Then we had another road to cross. We did it the same way as we had crossed the first road, with everyone in a line along the side of the road.

Then we walked along the side of the road for a bit. The trail we were going to be taking started up in an parking lot somewhere ahead, so we did not have to worry about missing it.

I was just walking along, being amazed at the view. There were so many gorgeous views on this trip, and the crappy camera I had did not do them justice. But I took a couple of ok pictures, so I’ll include those with the proper day. 🙂

The view walking next to the Blue Ridge Parkway

After a few minutes we made it to the parking lot. There were several cars parked there, and just past them was the trail. I don’t know about anyone else, but I know I was very happy to see that it was a proper trail, not like the trail we had just been on.

We took a quick water break there at the bottom of the trail. The water break became a longer break when several dogs and their owners came by. Every time we saw a dog we would stop for a bit and exclaim over the dog. (Everyone was missing their dogs, so they all wanted to love on the ones we saw on the trail.)

Taking a break.  From left to right: Bobby, Maggie, Ben, Tullia, and Kayce

The road we walked next to, with the mountains in the background

After we started walking again, we only stopped 4 or 5 times for water breaks. I was a bit further back this time, since Luke and Bobby had gone ahead of me so they could talk with Jen. I’m not really sure what happened next – it all happened so fast! I just remember Luke down on the ground next to the trail, about to fall off the mountain. I remember that Bruce and Bobby had him by his ankle and his arms (I think that’s where they grabbed him…) They pulled him back up onto the trail and pulled him onto his feet. It seems that he had been stepping out of the way to avoid a bee, and he had gone a little too far. After he assured us he was ok, we started walking again. But I noticed that he was walking a bit closer to the uphill side of the mountain then he had before! 😀

We hiked for a good 2+ hours before stopping for lunch. It had been a busy day so far:

• We had woken up at around 6:30 (I think that’s when everyone else woke up… I know I woke up at about 6:00).
• We had packed up the camp, eaten breakfast, had the poop talk, and had our navigation lesson and were leaving the camp at about 10:00.
• We had taken somewhere around an hour to get up that one trail, so we had hiked that until 11:00.
• And then we had hiked for another two hours or so after we crossed the road.

So it was around 1:30 when we decided that we were going to get to the creek that was coming up before we ate. Everyone was getting hungry, and we were starting to run out of water. Lets just say that we were all really glad when we could hear the creek. 😀

Click here to read the next part of Day Two.

*Everything here is from my own memory and may not be correct. Outward Bound is not responsible for anything I post here.*