Cherish the Cabin

Practically every year Virginia Tech plays a Thursday night game at home in Blacksburg. Since the game doesn’t get over until 11:30 or so, it’s never worth driving back all night to home just to go to work on a Friday, so normally we turn our Thursday night home games into long weekends. In the past we’ve gone backpacking or hiking in the Blue Ridge or Shenandoahs, and this year was no different. Since we hadn’t explored the mountains of North Carolina since we’ve been here, we decided to stay out there for the weekend. (Note to DSky227 – I wasn’t avoiding talking about the pain of the BC game, just had to get home to an internet connection first.) Sage had done some digging and found a cheap cabin that was halfway between Boone and West Jefferson. Uh, where? Exactly. So this blog will be a sort of combo game & weekend getaway recap.

Thursday, 10/25. I’ve talked about the drought that NC has been in previously, so I’ll be the last one to complain about some much-needed rain. But last Wednesday it started to rain in downpours, and Thursday dawned gloomy and rainy as well. After working a half day, we loaded up the car and headed to Blacksburg. We had plenty of food for tailgating, though we weren’t sure we’d be able to since the weather up in the ‘Burg was predicted to be low 50’s and rainy as well. Either way it wouldn’t go to waste, since we could just eat it all at the cabin during the weekend. Sure enough, by the time we got to Blacksburg, around 4:00 pm, we could tell the tailgate wasn’t going to happen. So we hit Bogens, one of our old favorites in Blacksburg, for pregame eats. I have to say, while the waftos were great as always, the food was pretty subpar from what I’ve remembered. Next time we’ll just have to hang out in the Bogens bar and gorge ourselves on their great popcorn.

After dinner we headed to our parking lot to make sure we didn’t get stuck in traffic. Thursday night games are sometimes traffic nightmares, as classes go on until 4:00 or 5:00, but tailgaters want to show up right about the same time. Therefore you have all sorts of faculty and students leaving campus right as 45,000 fans are driving in.
Luckily we got to our lot without much difficulty, and decided to listen to the pregame show on the radio while we eat some cookies in the car. With the rain coming down pretty good, we didn’t want to stand out in the bad weather and get all wet before we absolutely had to.

Not surprisingly, the crowd wasn’t a real early arriving one, though it surprised me that the students started showing up en masse quite early, even though it the rain was steady. The Marching Virginians’ pregame show was one of my favorites, where they rush the field and do an outline of the state of Virginia. The show is a tribute to the state of Virginia, to Blacksburg, and to Virginia Tech, and always gets the crowd revved up.

I’d rather not talk about the game, but I suppose I must. The Hokies held Boston College to less than 150 yards of offense and zero points through the first 56 minutes of the game. Our offense, like usual, was under-achieving, but we didn’t turn the ball over or make many mistakes, and the defense was playing incredibly stout. With about 4:11 left in the game and winning 10-0 we pooched a punt to the 8 yard line. In order to win BC would have to march 92 yards, score, get an onside kick, and score again, all in 240 seconds, against our defense which was playing incredible. Even four days later I still can’t believe I saw BC do just that. I have NEVER heard it as quiet in Lane Stadium as I did last Thursday night when BC scored the go-ahead touchdown. I’ve witnessed some heartbreaking VT losses over the days: McNabb to Brominski in 1998; Losing to Syracuse again in the Carrier Dome in triple OT in 2002; Bryan Randall throwing an INT against WVU with 12 seconds left when we were in FG range and only needed 3 points to tie in 2002; and of course leading Florida St. in the National Championship game in the 4th quarter, only to see the Criminoles pull it out over the last 15 minutes. The BC game will go down as one of the top 3 most painful losses I’ve seen VT suffer, and I hope the team bounces back better than I will. I also hope that BC wins all the rest of their games, and we play them again for the ACC championship in Jacksonville on 12/1. Nothing would make me happier this year, not even beating Florida St, Miami and Virginia, than to take Boston College out of the National Championship game. Lots of football to be played before then, though, and next up is another Thursday night game, this time on the road in Atlanta against Georgia Tech.

After trudging back to the car, soaking wet and plodding through puddles and mud, we made it back to the hotel to see the last 2 innings of Game 2 of the World Series. The Sox held off the Rockies for a 2-1 win, and going up 2-0 in the WS helped offset our bad mood a little bit.

Friday, 10/26. We slept in and woke up to more rain. Our plan today was to do some hiking on Mount Rogers, about an hour south of Blacksburg, and about halfway to our cabin. We’ve climbed Mount Rogers, the highest point in Virginia, once before, but that was from the northern side of the mountain. We had read that coming in from the southern side, from Grayson Highlands State Park, the scenery is much better, and there are wild ponies running about as well. We packed up, stopped for breakfast, and got to the state park around Noon. The park is pretty high, close to 4,000 feet, and the weather was foul. Since we hadn’t been out hiking since our trip to Utah in August, we weren’t going to let some rain and cold get in the way, so we bundled up, piled on the rain gear, and headed out into the cloudy, misty day.

The Grayson Highlands are named because they are reminiscent of the Scottish Highlands. While the low clouds and weather obscured much of our views, I have to say that it was still quite gorgeous. The mountain isn’t covered in that many trees, but is mostly grassy and rocky. And sure enough, the wild ponies were everywhere to be seen. We saw at least 15 of the horses, and they were not skittish of people at all. I’m sure they’re used to hikers coming by all the time, but every time we came up to some that were in or near the trail, they would simply move gently out of the way. They never approached as if to beg for food, but they never bolted off either, afraid of us humans. The weather wasn’t doing much for their manes, making them all wet and tangled, but they looked quite fat, so obviously they’re quite fond of the Highlands and all the food it has to offer.

We weren’t up for the entire 9 mile roundtrip hike to the top, especially when the wind started up higher on the mountain, but we made it up to Rhododendron Gap before turning around, doing about 5 miles. We were completely soaked by the time we got back to the car, but we knew there would be a cozy cabin with a warm fireplace and hot tub waiting for us in Todd, NC, which made it a bit more bearable.

To get to our cabin we needed to go up and around plenty of more mountains on windy back roads, so we were both quite happy to finally make it to Todd and our home for the next 2 nights. It was a small place, but more than we needed really. It had 2 bedrooms, a good size kitchen, small living room with fireplace, and a hot tub on a screened-in back porch. After a couple hot showers and drying our wet clothes out, I grilled up the hamburgers and hot dogs we had prepared for the tail gate, and accompanied that with a nice bottle of Red Truck wine. After a soak in the hot tub (those jets were a godsend to our achy, hiking joints), we watched Halloween to creep us out a bit and get us in the mood for scaring trick-or-treaters next Wednesday.

Saturday, 10/27. Considering that both of us are pretty out of shape, neither of us were too surprised that we were in all sorts of pain when we woke up Saturday morning. We had thought of doing some more hiking in the nearby Pisgah National Forest, but decided instead on going “yahoo” for the day and visit Grandfather Mountain, about 20 miles south of Boone. This is a privately owned place that required an entry fee, but they did have an animal sanctuary, nature center, and lots of trails on the mountain. It also had a road that led almost to the top of the mountain, which I was really glad to hear. We got to the entrance gate, which was right off a state highway, at about 9:30 am. There were about 5 cars in front of us waiting to get in, and there was very little room for cars so we were actually backed up onto the highway. It seemed kind of dangerous to me, and wondered why they didn’t move the entrance gates up the road a bit to alleviate this back up. When we bought our tickets the woman mentioned that “it’s a bit windy at the top, so watch your car doors when you get out up there.” Good advice, I thought, but how windy could it be? So we drove the 3 miles or so to the top, and windy it was. Walking to the visitor’s center, only about 100 yards away, required lowering your head into the wind pushing your legs to make sure you walked in a semi-straight line.

The main attraction at the top of Grandfather Mountain is their “Mile-High Swinging Bridge”. It’s a short walk to the bridge from the visitor’s center, and the clouds up that high made it impossible to see a) how far down the drop would be, and b) the other side of the bridge, to know how long it is. It was pretty wild, getting almost blown over by the wind while standing next to the bridge, and I decided to go for it. The bridge is metal (mostly aluminum I think) and the wind would howl through the structure and create some beautiful humming music. Once in the middle of the bridge I could see that the drop below the bridge wasn’t that exciting at all. It was only about 50 feet above the ground, and maybe 50 yards long. (The whole “Mile-High Swinging Bridge” marketing is pretty effective, I’d have to say, making you think that you’re much higher off the ground than you actually are.) After going across and coming back I talked Sage into making the trip, and she realized it wasn’t as scary as it first looks.

After looking around the gift shop and buying a shot glass, we found the weather station instruments and reviewed the data. It was showing wind gusts of up to 50 MPH while we were standing there, and the high that day was almost 70 MPH. Their record wind speed is almost 200 MPH, but they’ve only been taking official measurements for the past 10 years or so. Mount Washington might have to worry about its ranking as the world’s windiest place one of these days.

There were a few trails to the top of the mountain from the parking lot, but they were all closed off. Apparently the trails require the use of some ladders to get up and over some of the rocks and boulders, and I guess they felt it would be kind of dangerous in that wind. We weren’t too disappointed as our legs and knees were still sore, so we drove down to the animal sanctuary to look at what they had. It wasn’t huge, but they do have a large group of black bears, including a cinnamon black bear. (We saw 2 cinnamon black bears during our travels out west in 2006, but I think those are much more common in the west. At Grandfather Mountain we found out that only 1% of Eastern black bears are ever cinnamon colored.) They allow you to purchase bear food and feed some of their bears, which I wasn’t too excited about. Obviously the bears loved it, as they were extremely fat and would sit with their tongues hanging out, waiting for someone to send them a treat. Also there was an injured bald eagle, otters, deer, and cougars.

After a walk through the nature center and museum, we headed on out. When we got to the entrance gate, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were cars backed up on the state highway IN BOTH DIRECTIONS waiting to get in. This road is only 1 lane in each direction, though they do have a turning lane at the entrance. But as we pulled out (and thanked our lucky stars that we got there early), the line of cars coming up from the direction of Boone stretched a good half mile. I was wondering how many of these people were just driving down the road as opposed to those going to Grandfather Mountain? I couldn’t imagine being stuck in that line of cars for 30 minutes, only to finally get to the front and realize it’s just a backup of people turning into a tourist attraction!

On the way back to the cabin we stopped in Boone. I wanted to stop by Appalachian State University (world famous for beating Michigan this year in football) and go to their bookstore, get a shot glass, and maybe some merchandise about their huge victory. Unfortunately the school wants to keep the bookstore hidden, and after driving around the relatively small campus, not finding any indication of where the bookstore might be, where we could park, or any type of map, we simply gave up and headed back to the cabin. Boone’s traffic was crazy as well. I’ve never seen such a small town have so much traffic. (And no, there wasn’t a football game going on that day that caused all the traffic. I can’t imagine how bad it would be on a game day.)

Once back at the cabin it was time for some good ol’ relaxing. We got in some reading, I watched dribs and drabs of some football, and we made some spaghetti to have with our nice bottle of Sangiovese. That night it was all Red Sox as we watched the Sox take a commanding 3-0 lead in the World Series. (Note: the MLB postseason playoffs are ridiculously long. None of the games got over prior to 11:30, and the Game 3 took over 4:15 hours! For a 9-inning game, that is just ridiculous. Part of the problem is definitely the players and coaches taking their time, but starting the games after 8:30 and letting Fox double their commercials is so stupid. And people wonder why fans flock to football now and away from baseball.)

Sunday, 10/28. Nothing too exciting, as we got up, loaded the car, and drove the 3 hours or so home to Durham. The weekend was a lot of fun (after Thursday night, I mean), and that area of North Carolina is really lovely. I wish it was about 2 hours closer, as it’s a bit far to head out there for a day of hiking. We’re hoping to go back in the spring to see the millions of rhododendron bushes that are everywhere during their bloom. That must really be a sight to see.