my weekend | hiking in cleveland, sc

it’s been a skinny minute since i’ve done a my weekend post.
i mean come on, MAY of last year? dang amy…dang.
but that’s alright, the past few weekends have been full of fun.

this past weekend i had a girls night, spent all saturday hiking, and sunday recovering, lounging with girlfriends for life group, and 3 (yes 3) walmart runs to get the parts for my oil to be changed. and lots of laughter, conversation, criminal minds episodes (y’all i’m hooked & binge watching) and even some tough moments. ALSO since it happeend two weekends ago i had to post it here – i crossed off part of a point on my 30 before 30 list! i got my hands on a kayak! it’s my brothers, but he won’t be using it often so i’ll be cleaning it up and using the crap out of it come spring!

saturday morning my friend eddie & i hopped in his truck and drove about 3 1/2 hours to cleveland, sc and headed up to caesars head state park to get our hike on and go check out the raven cliff falls (and then another hike to the suspension bridge). the mountains were foggy + misty and pretty dang quiet. there were a good amount of cars in the parking lot when we got there, but we only passed people a handful of times. the hike to the suspension bridge was really quiet – we saw group of teenagers towards the middle of it and the rest was completely quiet – the perfect way to hike!
it definitely helped that i felt like i was walking through a mixture of narnia and the forbidden forest. i was just waiting for harry to come out wands a’blazin. 😉

it got really chilly at certain points – and even rained, which we both thankfully brought rain jackets and kept on hiking. the overlook to the falls was beautiful. i love that you can always hear the waterfall from miles away – nature just amazes me, God is such a cool creator. and this was one of the first wooden suspension bridges i’ve ever walked on (so cool) but dang when it moves – it freaked me the heck out!
my legs are killing me (still) today. i’ve had my compression sleeves on all the time, i’ve been rolling out my legs, and using espon salt baths (praise!) to help with the muscle soreness.
i mean…when you end up hiking 13.5 miles you kind of need to rest a little bit =p

after the hiking we grabbed dinner at the whistle stop before starting the drive home.
y’all…if you’re ever traveling through travelers rest you need to stop here. the atmosphere was awesome, the service was so friendly, and my goodness the food. THE. FOOD. was so good! i got the veggie flat-bread and it had this sauce on it that tasted like liquid pimento cheese yummmm. it was definitely a fun day trip!

have you had any day trips recently?
are you a hiker? what are some of your favorite places to go?