The Lake District

4.24.10- 4.25.10 weekend
We left early Saturday morning for the Lake District to get some quality hiking in. By 11 we were at Scales where we started our hike. The beginning was ridiculously hard and, needless to say, I started to feel self-consious about my cardiovascular abilities. I was able to tough it out and we made it to the tarn where the real adventure began. We had a food stop and then we started our climb up the cliff- literally hand over hand climbing. I felt like I was at an adventure course, minus the harness and safety precautions. The climbing actually wasn’t that hard. Believe it or not walking up the hills earlier ended up being the hardest part of the entire climb. Once we made it to the top we admired the views for a bit- truly breathtaking- and climbed over to where prarsailers were ‘sailing’ out then started the descent. Walking down mountains sucks. Its hard on your knees and you always feel like your going to fall. Next time I’m going to parasail down I think.

We were staying at a really cute hostel near Ambleside that was an old converted mansion. Definitely my favorite YHA- plus they had a great breakfast. The next morning we drove to Grasmere (?) and saw a great waterfall then drove into town. We split into two groups: DuPuy, Sara, Dave and Emma went to hike and see another waterfall and the rest of us decided we wanted to rough it and climb up a mountain that we thought looked pretty epic. We had to forge a river- throwing stones to make paths sounds a lot easier than it actually is fyi- and climb some fences, but we finally made it to a hiking trail and made our way up. Today was a bit different in that we weren’t hiking in open scenery- it was more wooded. The weather was misty and foggy, and so by the time we made it to the top we were literally in the clouds!! It was such an awesome feeling. We met up with the others a few hours after we split and we were all exhausted and unanimously decided to head home. Such an amazing weekend!! I have officially found a new love of hiking, I can’t believe I have never done it before! Seriously, one of my favorite weekends, it was great to be outside- after all you simply can’t beat the scenery here.

4.26.10
I woke up annoyingly early today and then was exhausted again by the time we had tech at 10…life is weird. I think my body is just tired from climbing mountains all weekend (what a B.A. thing to say). We did some grocery shopping (yay!) and played soccer later. I was still a bit sluggish though so I just played one game and went for a quick run to try and loosen my muscles up a bit. I finished my seminar topics and put a ‘lick and a promise’ on my garden project for our presentation tomorrow so at least I was able to be productive. A few of us went to the station to watch The Last Station about Tolstoy- so good! I had no idea about his ideas and followers in his later years. Learn something new everyday.