Father / Son hike

On Saturday I took Randy out hiking. We traveled up to Rainbow falls near the N. Carolina border inside YMCA camp property. I couldn’t remember for certain, but I thought the hike would take about an hour to reach the falls.

We stopped in at the office to sign in and the guy looked at me like Randy wasn’t going to make it. I told him I had hiked it twice before and we’d see how far we could get.

We started out at 11am. At 12:30pm we came to a crossing of a creek. There was no obvious way to cross. This was not the hike I remembered. It also was taking way too long. Randy was complaining that it was too dangerous and his legs were too tired. It was dangerous because of the steep edges the trail followed in some areas. He even told me it was the worst day of his life ever. I took a line from the Simpson’s movie, which he liked, “worst day of your life SO FAR”. He did get a bit of a laugh out of that. I told him we would turn around and head back up the hill. We took a few breaks going back up. Once we were half way or more back we found a small trail that split off and went through some mud. We took that small trail and within five minutes, we were at the falls.

I had taken a wrong turn on this unmarked trail and took us forty five minutes out of the way. That was an hour and a half of hiking I could have saved us. Randy reminded me that it was my fault we went the wrong way. I reminded him it was his fault we ran out of food. Before we left, he was smearing peanut butter on some celery sticks. He made six. I asked if he only wanted three each. He shrugged his shoulders. He just didn’t want to smear any more peanut butter. I emphasized that it didn’t sound like much food.

At the waterfall, Randy’s attitude improved greatly. We even took some pictures together. From then on, we had a great time together. I’m not sure he really appreciates these long hikes. He asked several times if they would ever install an elevator. He said they could make it out of wood to keep it more “in nature”.