"God Bless America?!?"

Matt and I had the most fantastical long weekend vacation in the history of long weekend vacations – everything was wonderful from the explicitive heavy hikes to the butter drenched sunsets – Woooo, it was nice.

The five hour drive on Friday afternoon was kind of excruciating. Matt drove the whole way because we cannot trust my car and he cannot trust me to drive his. The trip made him pretty grumpy and I began to think that the weekend would end up being a gigantic mistake. But the place was beautiful, the cabin was super clean, my cooking is still delicious at high altitudes, and Matt stopped being grumpy once we got out of the car.

We hiked a lot – our first outing was to the top of the famed Molly’s Knob. I thought the park – Hungry Mother – was named after a bear that was hungry and also maybe had a cub that you touched or something and the bear was going to eat you because it was so hungry and protective. It made complete sense to me. It turns out, however, that the park is named after a pioneer woman who hiked up the mountain with her small child to escape the massacre of vicious Injuns. She only ate berries and when she got to the top she was hungry. And then she died.

The hike to Molly’s Knob is a mile “straight up,” which made me say “Molly, what the hell were you thinking, girl?” about a million times until I got scared that her ghost was going to come after me for being disrespectful. Matt didn’t tell me the trail was black diamond super duper hard – on this trip we discovered his knack for choosing trails that make me say, “are you fucking kidding me?” Turns out Yourself! Fitness is kind of a sissy workout and we are not in as good of shape as we thought – the hikes were difficult but always worth the effort when we’d get to the end and see paradise on earth times a zillion.

We kept finding little place and declaring them to be our favorite spot in the world, ever. Virginia is so astonishingly beautiful. I was reminded of a thing an Iranian friend said to me as he drove me back to school after fall break our junior year, “God bless America?!? God has already blessed America!! Just look how beautiful this state is, this country is! There is no where in the world more blessed!” After this weekend, I am inclined to agree.

We took, I believe, 264 pictures. I’ll post a small sampling soon.