After reading posts about and seeing videos about the Linville Gorge [http://www.linvillegorge.net/], I decided I had to see it for myself. I was originally supposed to go up with some friends and two of my girls, but the wife had other plans. Rather than driving up to the gorge on Friday, we spent the day at the Discovery Island water park in Simpsonville and then went to dinner at Papas and Beer (not a beer joint :) ). Then we drove over to REI to walk off dinner before climbing to the top of and then finally headed home. On Saturday we loaded up the family cruiser and drove up for the day.
This video is from the top of Hawk's Bill in the Linville Gorge. You really MUST see it for yourself. It is SPECTACULAR!!! I made the hike up the trail with a 21 pound baby strapped to my chest.
side story
REI in Greenville, SC had an ENO hammock hanging outside the store tonight - strung way too tight and using slapstraps of course. It was all I could do to keep from embarrassing the wife by going in and educating the entire store on the proper way to hang a hammock.
Muskrat and some of his friends were hammock camping across the road from the trail head to Hawk's Bill. We got to their site around 3:00pm and hiked Hawk's Bill trail. After coming back down from site seeing, we hung out around the site until 6:00pm. All told, we spent 7 1/2 hours on the road for a 3 hour visit.
Was it worth it??? YES!!!! Would I do it again??? Yes!!! But I would rather spend more time the next go 'round.
