On The Road.... Again

Well, we have some better news this time after all of the bad from the previous days. As most of you know Monday was awful and really couldn't get much worse. Tuesday was plagued by an injury and thought we were done for. Wednesday started with some time to regroup and figure things out. Since the finger injury on Tuesday, we decided to take the day off from climbing and have a "rest day". We did however make the most of our day by going on a 1-1/2 hour mountain bike ride around the New river gorge. It was nice to get some exercise in and not just sit around and get bored. Most of the afternoon Jodi and I contemplated different scenarios for our given situation. We decided to "sleep on" some thoughts we had, as we didn't want to make any hasty decisions. That evening some really good friends of ours invited us over to their house for dinner. It was great for three reasons: 1. It is always nice to see friends. 2. The food was amazing!!! 3. They gave us some really good advise into our current situation, and possible solutions we did not think of. (Thanks Tracy and Joe)

Thursday stated early by meeting up with Joe (from previous nights dinner) at his house. We wanted see if we could get some climbing in somewhere. The night before we had some rain, so we were not very optimistic. But none the less it would be a good "exploring/hiking day". We headed over to Bubba City to see if any of the rock was dry in the Beer Wall area. Since most of those climbs in that area are pretty easy, this would be a great time for me to "test" out my bum finger. I really wanted to see how much strengh/range of motion I had in it. We hiked down to BC and everything was soaked. We quickly turned around and hiked out. Since the outlook for dry rock was near impossible, our focus now turned to exploring some new crags. Joe took us over to some newer areas by the Meadow river. They all turned out to be soaked as well, but it was nice to see the quality of stone there and all the potential. After a couple of hours of hiking around, the skies seemed to have lifted and were once again in search of dry stone. Joe, having a number of years Trad climbing, suggested that Bridge Area might be dry. We had really nothing to lose so we checked it out. Rounding the corner to the Cliff, the parking lot in the distance showed signs of life. We were starting to get excited. Sure enough there was a boy scout group there and they were climbing. We grabbed our packs and headed for the cliff. Joe saw that "Zag" was dry and asked if we be interested in climbing it. The answer was yes, so we did. I tell you, right now, crack climbing is hard!!! This is coming from a pure sport face climber. We had tons of fun climbing that crack. Totally different ballgame. I can also tell you, we learned a lot that day. After a couple of burns on that we headed right next door to an 10a arete climb. (Angles Arete?) We climbed that several times and had a blast. This climb was a little more our speed. Thin, balancy, technical. All the stuff we like. The best part, was after climbing all day, my finger really didn't hurt. This tells me that it might not have been as serious as originally anticipated. We both left the cliff feeling rejuvenated. Friday we would tackle the car.

Friday morning we woke up early and finalized our plan for the road trip. Our decision was to rent a car for 6 weeks and continue with the trip. The reason 6 weeks was chosen was due to our budget. Renting a car for such a long time is expensive. We still wanted to go ahead with the trip, and figured 6 weeks, although somewhat rushed, would give us enough time to see and do what we wanted to. We ate a quick breakfast then headed to Beckley regional airport to rent a car. That place happened to be the closest/least expensive around. We chatted with the lady behind the counter, who was super nice, about our situation. She said we had the option of extending our trip by two weeks to make it a full 2 months, if Jodi and I decided to, we would just call her from the road and pay the differance. We were very excited about that. She gave us the keys to the car and headed back to load up our car, once again. Below is a picture of us repacking our new 2010 Toyota Corolla rental car, with 31,500 miles on it.

After we packed the car we left to see how far we could get. We left Fayetteville around 1:30ish and headed for Kentucky. We drove for about 6 hours and stayed the night at a KOA just south of Louisville, KY. Below is a picture of Jodi all set up ready to cook some dinner. Tomorrow our plan is to put in a long day of driving and see if we can get up to Wisconsin somewhere. We will keep you all posted soon. Thanks again for eveyone's support through our rough start. We are both looking forward to brighter days.