At the start of spring (or summer... though technically it was still winter.. this would make more sense to you if you'd been in Chattanooga in February and March this year), I went up to a friend's cabin in Damascus, Virginia. The Appalachian Trail winds around this area, and we ended up doing a 9 mile hike to Mount Rogers along the AT. The hike started off innocently enough, with gray skies and feeling a little cool, but right as we were half a mile from the summit, in rolled a vicious thunderstorm and cold mist, so we high-tailed it to a nearby shelter and sat out the rain for nearly an hour. As soon as the rain let up, we took off jogging back to the car and made it back in an hour and a half, an hour shorter than our hike up the mountain had taken.
Along with the AT, there's the Virginia Creeper Trail, which is a
17-mile stretch of old railroad line that has been transformed into a
biking trail through the "Rails to Trails" program. It was a nice day
"ride" (or more accurately, coast).
The highlight about the Wolf Den cabin by Little Laurel Creek was a bat flying out of the chimney on our first night, though the outdoor heated shower was pretty cool as well. The trip was filled with copious amounts of bocce ball, horseshoes, and croquet, plus a little trout fishing action along one of the local streams.
