9 Miles...Why Not?

Last night we went to Comfort for dinner with Cortney and Clayton and the food was awesome as usual.  What was more awesome?  The winter wonderland that met us when we walked outside.  Unfortunately, the "storm" only produced a dusting.  Our walk to the car was exciting anyway and I always love a snowy yard out the window in the morning.

After a sleep in and a quick breakfast, we headed out for a 9 mile walk along and across the James River.  Ginger has been "begging" us to take her out and about for a few weeks with sad glances and depressed behavior and she's right.  We were way overdue on giving her some quality exercise.

We started at the Reedy Creek parking lot of Riverside Drive, made our way down the Buttermilk Trail, across the Boulevard Bridge, down to the North Banks Trail, past Maymont Park, onto Kansas St., to the Texas Beach parking lot, back to the North Banks Trail.  At this point, either we made a wrong turn or the North Banks Trail is just shit.   But suddenly, the trail was gone causing us to hike up a steep embankment to the railroad tracks.  We took a few steps and noticed some smoke coming from an obvious small fire.  I quickly became frightened.  Who was just in front of us on the side of the railroad tracks with a burning campfire?  Homeless man, escaped convict, teens up to no good?  I clearly watch too much TV.  We quickly crossed to the other side of the tracks, I prepared my cell for an emergency call and we made our way past the suspicious area as fast as possible.  Further down the tracks, we thought the North Banks Trail had appeared again so we traversed back down the steep embankment but were met with briers, muddy ground, etc.  We stayed on the "trail" anyway until we could go no further, hiked back up the embankment, back onto the railroad tracks and made our way as quickly as possible to the Belle Isle hanging bridge.  At that point, we were back on track.  We mad our way across the hanging bridge, onto the service path and back to our starting point.  Just as we were approaching the end of our journey, it began to snow.  Perfect ending to an adventurous walk/hike.  It only took us 2.5 hours for the whole thing.  Not bad.

Ginger had a blast.  She ran, swam, chased ducks, and got as dirty as possible.  She has been sleeping since we arrived home.

After our walk, we were famished so we stuffed our faces at Chicken Fiesta on the Midlo Turnpike.  SO GOOD, by the way.