So I decided to take off Veteran’s Day at the urging of Ms. Caitlin. When I asked her what the plan was, she told me “hiking.” Damn, that’s cool. Having hiked Old Rag when I was young, I was due for another visit. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t looking too great on Vet’s Day, but great on the Saturday before it so we decided to go on Saturday. Mid 70 degree weather was simply awesome for the hike. Unfortunately, a lot of other people had the same idea as us. We ended up waiting nearly an hour at one bottleneck.<br/><br/>The hike itself was a bit tougher than I remember, but being in pretty good shape we had no problems. Heck, we actually ended up running on the way down for about 2 miles. The 7.28 mile loop could have been done in about 3:30, but we finished in 4:45 with an hour wait at one spot so roughly 3:45 with a short stop for lunch and another short stop at the summit.<br/><br/>I think a couple weeks earlier would have been even better as far as the fall colors go, but there were still many yellows and a few nice reds to be seen.<br/><br/>Oh yeah, thanks to our run down we were able to get back to the car and on the road before the local winery closed up at 5. A short tasting and 6 bottles later, we were on our way home for some giant Chiptole burritos that we had been craving all day.<br/><br/>Good times, but I’m more exhausted than I have been in a long time. I can’t really recommend the fun hike (there are two ways up; one difficult, one easy… people usually take the hard way up and the easy way down, but some take the easy both ways) unless you’re in decent shape. Otherwise, you’ll likely just be slowing those of us who are better at life than you :tongue:<br/><br/><center><a href=”http://iammike.org/gallery/?dir=miscellaneous%2F2006_11_11_Old_Rag_Mountain”><img src=”http://iammike.org/gallery/?preview=miscellaneous%2F2006_11_11_Old_Rag_Mountain%2FPicture%20005.jpg”/><br/>Click for Gallery!</a></center>