Hiking "Old Rag"

On my visit to see Darrin we spent Sunday morning doing a "little" hike.

Darrin tells Mandy and I he wants to leave by 6am... a little earlier than us girls would have liked, but Darrin assures us this is the best time to leave. This hike is going to take us a good 5 hours. 

So we get up at 5:30am, and by just a couple minutes past 6am we are out the door to travel to the 

Old Rag Mountain - Shenandoah National Park

I am not quite sure what I expected, but I think it is safe to say it was a much more challenging hike than I had expected.  We really had to work.

At first it was normal hiking through the woods stuff like you see in the picture above and below.

It was beautiful scenery. A beautiful morning. Weather was perfect and great company (Darrin and Mandy)!

Then about 1 1/2 hrs into the hike it starts to change. 

We get more rocks or I should say boulders and they got bigger and bigger and tougher and tougher to climb.

I

 

The picture below is what we are trying accomplish... hiking to the top of this mountain.

Here you can see we are almost there. Below is a picture of what we have already hiked and their is still more to go.

 

We teased this might be Mandy and Darrin's "Save the Date" photo!!!

Getting closer...

 

And I think we are just about there....

I think he thinks he is king of the world!

Me and my future sister-in-law, Mandy.

Me and my Bro.

These signs were on the summit. So we hiked 3.8 miles of rocks and now we look forward to 5.2 miles of hiking back to the parking lot. The back end of our hike was not near as rocky and it was all downhill, but was still some work.

On the way back we had some excitement and got to see a.... BEAR!!! It was a little one and it scrambled into the woods right away so unfortunately no picture. It was a little scary and a little exciting. Luckily we didn't see no Momma Bear, but I am sure she was around somewhere.

And here is a photo again of our great accomplishment of hiking "Old Rag"!!!

I very much recommend this adventure. It was a lot of fun!!!!