Well my PBR weekend got blown out of the water but instead of being glum, I decided to make the best of it. Went to work Thursday got a lot accomplished and scheduled new projects for November and December. Friday I groomed some of the critters, cleaned house some, took off my trash, the usual array of fun. Had a great pork tenderloin ( marinated with garlic and pepper) in the freezer so thawed it and invited Archie over for dinner. Tasty O.
Saturday morning we got up took a 2 mile walk with Zee dog and Vger in preparation for my upcoming trip to NM the first week in January (hopefully) .Then we thought we'd go shopping and did. Found some cool bargains, and actually got to climb a mobile rock wall around 25 feet high that was in front of a store having a promotion ( it had a self belayer) then came home found one of my critters (Cholla) had an injury on inside of his right front leg so cleaned it and gave him a shot of long acting penicillin hoping to set him right.
We will be doing the rock wall thing again, that was way fun. The people there seemed pretty excited to see two middle aged people do it
as the only ones previously in line were small children and college kids.
Unfortunately this morning (Sunday) I got ready for church headed out the door and found Cholla hopping around on three legs so the leg isn't better looks like he goes to the vet tomorrow, will have to leave work early.
January 2009 on what I think was our 3rd date or so we went to Gatlinburg the weekend before my birthday and hiked the Chimneys, it was icy and we didn't attempt the rock scramble at the end, but yesterday (Aug 28) the weather was inviting and so we drove up the 3 hours or so drive to do the hike. While it is only 2 miles to the end where the Chimneys formation is, it is a rough, steep and scenic 2 miles with several bridge crossings of rushing mountain streams. We start with a couple of photos of us at the beginning of 
the trail on one of the bridges. Archie really enjoys cheesy photos 
and take them. The one where he is kneeling is a little joke we have about "go on save yourself its too late for me" when we are on some really long taxing hike. The next photo here is looking DOWN from halfway up the rock scramble to get to the summit. You can get about halfway up and then there is a point where climbing up ex
poses you to a fall in either direction of several hundred feet. Now there are foot and handholds but we had to stop there a few minutes, have lunch and watch some younger folks navigate the problem 
before we felt like attempting it. We also had a spectacular view so took a photo of that too, had to be kind of careful though because the ridge is so narrow and you are so high up that I didn't want to look around too much and get freaked out. Other than banging up 
my left knee, we ascended to the top from that point with no problems then a nice young man at the top took photos of us sitting on the summit and I took one of Archie's traditional Superman pose ( I declined to pose as Wonderwoman standing up there) and I began to worry about getting down this wicked series of slanted tilted rock steps that are about 60 degrees tilted so I found another way down ( near the old path up on the right side) and climbed down. DON'T is all I can say, while we made it unscathed except some elbow banging the last photo here that looks steep is looking straight up from the bottom of how we climbed down. 
At one point over halfway down this climb I swear I wanted to have a meltdown but I talked myself out of it because there was nobody gonna rescue me but me at that point. It was a great adventure but I won't do that again. It did give me more confidence that I'll attempt the last section of Angels Landing when we are in Zion National Park on vacation in September.
