Not Cool, Bro, Not Cool

I kind of lost my mojo toward the end of that last post. I guess you shouldn’t start a post in one sitting and finish it in another. Poor Terry Pratchett. I hope that you still got how awesome he is from my post. I might have to dedicate another post to one of his books or something in the future. Anyway, part of the lost mojo stemmed from sheer exhaustion. Tuesday I had the opportunity to visit Chimney Rock State Park in North Carolina. Needless to say, my day involved a lot of hiking, but mostly sheer terror.  If you haven’t been to Chimney Rock before let me fill you in on something: Chimney Rock looks like the mountain has a chimney, i.e. it is high above the already high mountain. In fact, in order to get to Chimney Rock, you have to cross this:

 

Yeah. That doesn’t look terrible right? DEAD WRONG. You get to that after you’ve traversed the following:

And that’s only a portion of the steps we had to ascend before we got to the last nightmare. I guess I should clarify something if you hadn’t already figured out from my word choice. I am deathly afraid of heights. Extremely terrified. Here’s a scenario for you, it’s pretty funny for the non-me audience. On my eighth grade trip, my class went to New York City and Washington D.C. In New York City, we made a trip to the Empire State Building. Now I wasn’t a huge fan of this but I was okay with staying inside the building on the Observation level. Unfortunately, one of the parents chaperoning decided that I HAD to go outside the doors. They proceeded to drag me, kicking and screaming, outside the safety of the doors. That high up, the wind blows pretty hard which is horrifying, at least to me. Anyway, I’m pretty sure my nail-less fingers left marks in the concrete walls. And there were tears. It didn’t help that my best friend thought commenting about whether the building was swaying.  -_-  Not cool. Thankfully, my teacher came and saved me. But yeah, that’s how horrifying I find high places. 

So why, you may ask, did I think it would be a good idea to go to Chimney Rock in the first place? Well, that’s an interesting story. I honestly had no idea what to expect when my mom suggested we go to Chimney Rock. When talking about it, comparisons with Rock City were brought up. I am perfectly fine with Rock City. I love the rock fixtures and anything height related my feet are on solid ground. I don’t have to cross the swinging bridge if I don’t want to and more importantly I don’t have to climb an excess number of stairs. Stairs are scary for someone like me. Not only am I terrified of heights but I’m clumsy. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve fallen down stairs, I’d be pretty rich. Therefore, stairs + heights = Chimney Rock is horrifying. There was definitely some cries of child abuse thrown around and of course these two got a good laugh at my expense. 

 

It was a lot of fun despite my fears. I made it most of the way to the top, but that last set of stairs defeated me. According to my sister, I wouldn’t have made it once I got to the top of those stairs anyway. Short fences were the only thing that separated you from a long fall and there were a lot of rock crevices for clumsy me to trip over. While I let it defeat me, I’m glad that I’m not still stuck up there now because there was no way I was going to make it back down those last set of stairs. And besides I got some local honey and apple cider for my troubles which makes me one happy camper. 

Well that's it for this time! Until next time, happy readings!

P.S.  667 words! I'm on a roll!