Trek to Mount Dumb

It has been a while since either of us has posted, which is all Cris' fault.  Don't worry, I'm here to remedy this problem in style.  We went home for Christmas this year and loved seeing friends and family, but by the end of the two weeks we were very ready to head back home (that's right, we call SC 'home' now unlike when we lived in Milwaukee).  After two weeks of gray Michigan skies it was nice to finally see our old friend sunny back in SC.
We took advantage of the nicer weather immediately by hiking and fishing as much as possible for a couple weeks.  Then my parents came to visit us for a few days at the end of January.  It had been almost an entire month since they had last seen us so they were naturally eager to hang out with us again.  Come to think of it, it has almost been another month so I expect them to drop by shortly.
I was excited to show my parents how awesome it is living down south with our warmer weather and lots of stuff to do in January.  Sadly, my mom gets frequent hankerings for icicles so they decided to bring cold weather with them.

On the Saturday that they were here, Cris decided to go milk and marry some goats and poke holes in cheese (I think that's what she said, after like 22 years together all her words mush together into cute white noise).  So, it was just my bachelor self and my parents going on a short hike.  It was just like high school except my voice squeaked less and my dad has hairier ears (sorry).  We went to one of my favorite parks by the Chattooga River to do some fly fishing and hiking to see awesome waterfalls (Kings Creek Falls is to the right).  It was pretty cold so there were icicles all over which was neato.  Also, along the path there were patches of what we later learned is 'needle ice'.  Apparently, when the earth is warmer than the air and wet, the water from the ground will seep up and freeze as soon as it hits the air.  It keeps pushing out and freezing until it makes needles of ice (thus the name).  Here is a picture, look at it:

After seeing King's Creek Falls we decided to do some flyfishing.  Chattooga river is pretty big and fast so it takes some pretty good skill to figure out how to get a fly down to the trout in cold weather like this.  I'm a natural flyfisher so I quickly got a fly deep down in a pool where a giant trout grabbed my fly and hooked it around a tree branch.  By that time (my third cast) my hands were freezing and it had started to snow.  I think I probably tied another fly on but I could really feel it, and moved further upstream while it snowed ever harder.  It was beautiful and serene and extremely freakin cold, so I figure my dad felt right at home.  As the avid flyfisher that I am, I found the best spot on the river where all the fish live but unfortunately I had to jump across a couple rocks to get there.  I think I made a bunch of perfect casts but I couldn't feel them, so after a while we decided to call it quits.  I jumped back across the rocks I had used to get to the middle of the river, but this time one of the rocks decided not to be as solid or I had gained weight from all the snow sticking to my shirt.  Either way, my foot found its way into the nice warm (compared to the air) water so I had a wet foot for the rest of the day.  I would like to take this opportunity to thank my parents for not stating any of the obvious things like "that's why you shouldn't wear sandals when fishing in the winter" or "maybe you're too heavy to be stepping on small rocks" or "your older brother wouldn't have fallen in the river".  We warmed up in the car and the rest of the day was nice: we went to Spoonauger Falls and ate hamburgers.
The next week, Cris and I somehow decided that it would be a good idea to climb to the tallest peak in the SC (thus the Mt. Dumb title).  A little background:  neither of us got nearly enough exercise when we lived in Milwaukee due to the weather, ugliness, and lack of motivation.  So, we have been working on slowly building up to longer and longer hikes.  Before Christmas we had gone on a nice six-mile hike and ended it feeling pretty good.  So, the next logical step was to go home and get a little fat over the holidays and then come back and climb a mountain.  The hike to Sassafras Mountain is 10 miles which didn't sound too bad, but I don't think we realized how hard it is to go up and down that much.  There is a 2200 foot elevation change from where we started to the top, but there is also a lot of down and then back up and then back down and then back up and then back down and up again in there so we probably actually hiked about 300 miles.  I'm going to blame our decision making on the formaldehyde that is leeching into us from our camper. Anyways, we struck out in good spirits from the lovely town of Rocky Bottom and immediately began to regret our decision.  The first half-mile was very steep and there were leaves all over that made it a bit treacherous.  After about an hour, we got to a bridge that I optimistically named the halfway point since I was already pretty tired.  Then an hour later we got to a sign that was at the halfway point.  It was really cool to walk along the sides of the mountains and slowly get higher so we could see further and further.  At one point we got to a really awesome spot where others had camped before where I climbed some rocks to see the scenery. This was almost at the top of one mountain so we were thinking that we were almost there.
Then, after we walked over to the next mountain and realized that we still had to get to the next mountain after that, we figured we had misjudged.  I was starting to wonder if we could make it up to the top in time so that we could turn around and make it all the way back to the car before dark.  Spending a night in January in the woods with a grumpy and hungry wife didn't sound fun to me.  So, fastforward one blister, a bag of granola and lots of breaks to catch our breath and we finally made it to the top of Sassafras mountain.  I was proud that I had made it to the top, but I was not excited to hike all the way back down.  It was absolutely gorgeous on the top of the mountain and it was cool to see all the lakes in the distance.  We could even see the part of Lake Keowee where we live.  We rested and ate and drank on the

overlook for quite a while.  It always surprises me how nice the people in SC are.  Several couples walked up to enjoy the view and struck up conversations with us.  My natural reaction after living in Milwaukee is to hide my valuables and look at the cracks in the sidewalk so that the crazy person will leave me alone, but I tried to be friendly.  Once we felt rested and sore, we scraped ourselves off the ground and made the trek back down the mountain. The whole trip took a little over 7 hours and did a good job of deflating my ego.  It turns out I'm not in as good of shape as I was in high school and my muscles don't recover as fast.  It was a great experience with beautiful views and good company, but I think our next few hikes will be less ambitious.  Maybe just a nice walk to the fridge next time.

 Besides these little adventures, not much is happening in our lives.  I already have all my yardwork done for the year and it's only February.  Cris is doing some nannying to make some cash, and my work is going great.  In a few weeks I'll be going on a math field trip for three days all around SC so I might make a blog post about that.  I'm sure all the math nerds will have some hilarious hijinks and puns that I will want to share.  It's also finally time to do some serious fishing and less serious windsurfing.  This coming year is looking like it will potentially be the best year of our life together: a couple of weddings to attend with awesome people, lots of hikes to go on, fish to catch, and driving back and forth to Michigan a little too often.  Stay classy San Diego.