Day Trip One

Here, it is said that a friend will help you move, but a good friend will help you move a body. When we had the very excellent dinner that Lenka cooked for us last night, Thomas and I decided that a friend will buy you lunch. A good friend will cook for you. An excellent friend will travel 5000 miles to cook for you in your own home. Seriously, eating Czech food makes me feel happy and loved, and having someone prepare Czech cuisine for me makes me feel very special indeed.
Today, I took the girls to Chimney Rock in North Carolina for the day. We had the delicious lunch that Lenka had packed for us, which included sandwiches made with some of the pork roast that she had cooked for us last night. We took the Outcroppings Trail, about a 30 minute hike plus some few (hundred? thousand?) stairs up to the top of the Chimney, and back down again. We hiked the Skylane Trail (about an hour and a half) to the top of Hickory Nut Falls, which as you can see from the photo, is way higher than the Chimney, with both fantastic and a few scary (for me) views from near the very top of the mountain. The weather was cool and very windy, for the most part a good day for hiking. There wasn't the excitement of our previous trip, and I think that we were all glad for that.
What was especially nice for me were the conversations that Lenka and I had in the car and while we were hiking. In fact, I am sure that this was my favorite part of the trip. It's rare, for me at least, to find someone so open, funny, and sympathetic who isn't afraid of laughing at herself or at me, whose response to my sharing something is to share something of her own.