Today we went to hike on the Pump Gap trail in Hot Springs, NC. It was a good hike, about 7 miles from what we figure. Some of it pretty steep, even too steep for us to go on. We went on the Lovers Leap trail (neither one of us leaped), and ended up on the Pump Gap Trail. The trail followed the French Broad River for most of the time, and that was nice. It was pretty high water today, and thus very brown and muddy. One could hear water flowing from most places on the trail, or maybe I just imagined that…

We saw some lizards, and I saw a bunny and a wild turkey. Teresa was a little slow. No bears were seen which was good since we couldn’t remember what kind of bear we should try to intimidate and what kind of bear we should act like a rock for.

First, we snuck on to the park, Teresa said all the cool kids were doing it and if I didn’t do it also I wouldn’t be cool. I so want to be cool, so I went with her and snuck under the barbed wire onto the park. We walked along a nice little stream with some fierce rapids. Along the way we saw the little frog laying on the arrow sign. We thought it was dead, but you could see it’s little sides flutter from it’s heart beating. We left the little frog, walked past some toads, and ended up at a man-made lake where people were swimming and frolicking. We had no time for that for we were here to see a waterfall of some kind.

Thankfully the waterfall did not disappoint. The water level in the lake was extra high so the river flow was stronger than normal. We hung around on some giant rocks for a while and watched silly children lose their shoes into the water and attempt to retrieve them. Soon it was time to leave and we bid the waterfall adieu and headed home.

It was a good little hike through some of the wilderness that is Auburn, Alabama.