The "Perfect" Saturday

Stuart came in town this weekend and, as always, I had the weekend planned down to the second.  Granted, we generally do variations on the same theme when he’s here in Charlottesville: Farmers Market, followed by vineyard or hike, followed by dinner with friends or a date.

From the moment we woke up Saturday I knew it would be the perfect day.  Granted, Stuart may have thought differently given I made him get up at 7 to hit the farmers’ market.  Everyone knows that’s when you have the smallest crowds and the best produce, duh!  That morning the sun was shining without a cloud in the sky, but it wasn’t hot or humid.  We found a park downtown and made our traditional pass by every stall, taking mental notes of who had the cheapest English peas, or which bunch of asparagus looked the most fresh.  At least those were my notes.  Stuart’s job was to decide what we would eat for breakfast.  On the second pass I picked up cabbage, peas, beets, asparagus, baby carrots, strawberries, cherries and rhubarb.  Stuart decided he wanted an omelet for breakfast, so we visited Chef Tony and had honestly the best omelet of my life… of course with a cup of Shenandoah Joe on the side.  We had planned a hike after the market, so also decided to purchase a picnic lunch which consisted of spinach whole wheat bread and a nice peppercorn sheep’s milk cheese.

What else could make this morning more perfect you ask?  How about driving to our hike just in time to hear “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” on NPR!  We laughed the whole way to Skyline Drive before we lost service.  But by then we wanted the radio off and the windows down, and of course Winston was excited about that so he could hang his head out the window.  I had researched this hike called “White Oak Canyon”, and though it looked a bit complicated I found a loop that would take us through about 8 miles.  We had done a similar distance with Winston a few months ago so figured it would be okay.  The hike was moderate to strenuous per the map, with a steep descent the first half and a pretty good ascent the second half.  However, the views made up for the quivering quadriceps.  We basically followed a stream the entire hike, and as our steps descended the stream made several waterfalls.  These were pretty impressive falls by Virginia standards, and Winston benefited by being able to lap up a drink in the pools.

Alas, the hike was marked by twists and turns, and after we found our connector loop we realized we may have been getting a bit off track.  We started passing folks we had already passed earlier in the hike (which I’m still not really sure how that happened), and everyone kept telling us we still had a long way to go.  With tiring legs and blisters starting to pop up under my hiking boots, I said a silent prayer of thanks as we spotted the parking lot!  … Wait … that’s not the parking lot.  We had somehow hiked to a parking lot several miles down the road!  We figured we could walk back on the road to our other lot, but with Winston in tow that seemed a bit dangerous.  Instead we found another trail, which lead to another trail, which lead to another trail, which crossed a swift moving stream, which lead to another trail, which lead to our original parking lot.  Had my spirits not been briefly revived by walking up on a deer literally 20 feet from me, I might have collapsed from exhaustion and likely rhabdomyolysis (look it up).  By the time we got to the car I had low back pain and left hip pain (how old am I?!?), and it took both of us several minutes to be able to reflect back on the day and joke.

After we missed Supper Club due to being lost in the woods, and were sitting at an Indian restaurant loading up on calories and trying to not move our extremities too much, Stuart asked if I still thought it was the “perfect” day.  I decided it was – because there’s really no one else I’d rather get lost in the woods with!

Deceptively easy part of the hike

Thirsty boy!

Turns out if you prop your camera on a rock, that's almost as good as a tripod!

Nice Viewpoint

Winston blazing a trail across the water

Rock-Tripod

Needless to say we both took several hundred milligrams of Ibuprofen, and even today I still could barely walk.  I decided to try a run today which was painful – but sore muscles are a good kind of painful I guess!

And just so you know, the cabbage wound up going along-side some beer-poached and seared bratwurst which was frozen from last month’s pork share. The peas got shelled and complemented a nice faro risotto (turns out you can make risotto with things more healthy than rice), and I de-pitted the cherries and tried my hand at home made cherry hand-pies!  Next weekend I’ll get more market goodies, and probably do much less walking.

Here's my most adventurous pictures from the last stream crossing.  Poor Winston!