A few weeks ago, while my friends Alice and Grace were visiting for the weekend, we spent most of that Saturday outside exploring Hanging Rock State Park. The park isn’t that far away from Wake, maybe about an hour or so, and after their 9+ hour car ride the day before, we all agreed that some physical activity was desperately needed.
Before heading out to Hanging Rock, we stopped for breakfast at one of my favorite bagel shops in Winston, Bagel Station. I’m pretty sure that their breakfast bagels have some kind of magical restorative powers and the prices are cheaper compared to other breakfast places in town. We fueled up on carbs while making a game plan for the day: we allotted about 4 hours for our trip to give us time to stop by Walmart to pick up camo for the celebrations later that night.
I have to admit that I’m not the not the most outdoorsy person you’ll ever meet (probably a bit of an understatement…) so I spent most of our time at Hanging Rock taking artsy photographs and avoiding the puddles of mud that littered the trail like the plague. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy being outside; in fact I wish that I spent more of my time out in the wilderness exploring all that this great country has to offer! Ideally, however, with a bed and hot water awaiting me at the end of the day, but you take what you can get.
After walking for a good amount of time, we passed a trail sign that told us how far we had hiked so far. We were feeling fairly confident with ourselves and assumed that it would read 1.5- 2 miles, but no. At that point we had hiked a whopping .9 miles. Yes, that’s right, only .9 miles. We stood there in disbelief and shock, self-doubt creeping through us as we began to question whether we would actually finish the hike without getting lost or accidentally walking off a cliff.
About five minutes later we came across this huge snake and promptly ran back down the trail we were on and up another one. We took Lion King-inspired pictures, slapping furiously at the hundreds of thousands of mosquitoes that infested the trail before eventually heading back to the car.
We trudged our way back through the trails, occasionally running into fellow hikers who were much better equipped than we were.
Even though we never actually made it to our destination point, partially due to our lack of athleticism but mostly because of that monster of a snake, I had an awesome time hiking through Hanging Rock and would love to go sometime this fall when the leaves are changing.
