Have you ever had water fresh out of a mountain spring?  Not out of a bottle that says, "bottled from fresh spring water, with minerals added for taste".  That doesn't count.  I'm talking, water comes from middle of mountain, out a rock, and into you belly.  Okay, so in this case, there was also a bit of man made piping involved.  I'm not sure why the pipe was put in.  But, still, straight from the mountain.  See!  It was possibly the most delicious water I've ever had...  Bottle that, Aquafina.  Yours doesn't compare.  But, lets rewind to the beginning of the weekend.

It started WAY to early Saturday morning (6:30... blech!) when I headed out for a 7K race in Huntersville, NC (about 1:15 hr drive), which was sponsored by the burn unit.  I stopped by Starbucks and grabbed some oatmeal and a small coffee for pre-race breakfast.  I would have eaten at home, but I woke up too late!  I didn't get much sleep at the end of this week because we got a new big burn patient whose been pretty sick, and I'm getting sick myself and not sleeping well.  So, I ate on the way down, and got there with plenty of time to register, pick up my race packet and timing chip, and warm up a bit.  It was CHILLY!  The course was through a business park, and was hilly but not too bad!  I wasn't setting any expectations for time  because I have only been able to run for a couple weeks since my surgery, and am definitely not in any shape to be setting land speed records!  I was hoping to pace less that 9:00 minute miles.  I ended up finishing in 35:09, which is an 8:05 mile pace.  I was very happy with that!  I ALSO won $20 in gift cards to Omega Sports in the door prize raffle!!! 

After the race, I headed to the last men's rugby game of the year.  They got beat up by South Carolina, but held their own better than I would have guessed based on South Carolina's size!  And most importantly, no one got seriously hurt (not much for us to do, but it's better that way...)

After the game, I ran home to pack, then Betsy and I headed out towards Boone to camp/hike for the rest of the weekend.  We got to our campsite at the base of Grandfather Mountain at about 6:30, set up camp, made dinner (keep an eye out for the Gear Review post about the stove we used to cook it!), read for a while, and went to bed early!  This morning, we made oatmeal and coffee for breakfast before packing up camp and heading out to find a trail to hike.  We weren't sure where we were going to go, but we knew we wanted to find good fall color, and we wanted a somewhat long hike.  We've been meaning to go to Grandfather Mountain, but to drive to the top and hike those trails you have to pay!  I think hiking should be free.  Rumor on the street was, there are trails that start off other roads that you can use to hike up to the summits, and not have to pay.  We drove around for a few minutes, and stumbled onto the Profile View trail!  The friendly neighborhood park ranger told us that it was 3.1 miles to the top, and we could do more from there as we wanted.  We ended up hiking to two peaks (Calloway Peak and McRae Peak), which ended up being a total of 9.2 miles of pretty strenuous hiking.  But it was a PERFECT day, the views were beautiful, and it was all in all a pretty spectacular day.  I also learned that you can camp along the trail and am plotting a backpacking trip return....  Here are a few of the pictures from today, to review the fun!