Real Hills

Yesterday morning I was greeted by the beautiful sun rising over the mountains. The day before we had a bunch of fog, so it was nice to have a clear view.

Mary and I decided to take advantage of the fog-less skies and explore the area with a short run.

We’re on top of a hill, so the first part of the run wasn’t terrible. We mostly went downhill and enjoyed the views. Our end point was the beautiful lake we can see from our cabin, but nothing like this.

We definitely felt the burn on the way back. Our Florida legs preferred walking up the big hills, rather than even attempting to run them. Burn baby, burn.

In the end we covered 2.3 miles in a little more than 23 minutes. I swear it felt so much longer than 2.3 miles! It definitely brought a whole new meaning to hill training. Hills: 1. Meghann: 0.

Breakfast came with a little show.

Don’t worry, Bill is a professional. He knew what he was doing. 😉

Stephanie and Bill made their friend’s famous “Fried Oatmeal” recipe, which required toasting the oats in butter prior to cooking them and letting them sit in a loaf pan overnight before slicing and frying it. The whole recipe can be found HERE.

Once our bellies were full, we loaded the car up and headed to the highest point in Georgia: Brasstown Bald.

Did you know there’s a 5K that starts at the very bottom of the summit? It’s marketed as “...a little ol’ 5K with just one hill.” One BIG hill that lasts the entire 5k! Half of our group thought it would be fun to start at the very bottom and run the whole 5k up. The other half (the part I was in) thought it would be fun to drive to the trailhead and start there.

Oh, yeah. Much better.

Snow!

Sadly this is the only snow we’ve seen all winter. Sigh.

It wasn’t long before we saw the rest of our group gasping at the top. Surprisingly, they made excellent time. Kudos to them!

(photo via Mary)

We brought yesterday’s peanut butter s’more up a notch by adding bacon.

You. Are. Welcome.

Our evening entertainment.

Bill is professional performer. He is pretty entertaining.

Dinner.

Jess made southwestern chicken chili. I’m not 100% what’s in it, but I do know there was a couple of blocks of cream cheese that went on top. I think those were the secret ingredients. 😉

We had a blast playing charades (boys versus girls). Ironically no one had any problems guessing the raunchier clues, but I get “ingrown toenail” and “abandoned building” and fail to get a correct guess. Pshhh…

The evening was complete with a few rounds of Glee Karaoke.

I’m sorry this post is so choppy. We’re on a tight schedule to get on the road! It was an amazing vacation, but sadly it has to come to an end. Bye, bye, Georgia! We had a blast!