Canaan WV-- Highland Sky

Manon and I went to Canaan last weekend to volunteer at aid station 8 at Highland Sky 40 mile race. The weekend started out really rough, but got better. There was some confusion about where we were going to camp. We finally got that all straightened out just before dark on Friday night. Mark had been working in DC last week and since his family was not at home he came over to Canaan on his way home to hang with us and do some trout fishing. We were planing on running Sunday morning before heading back home.

We got up Saturday morning. Manon and I went to work the AS and Mark went fishing. We had a great day at AS 8, working with Kim. Some racers looked better than others, but all were very gracious. Congrats to all of the finishers !!!!!

We were ready to leave the post race celebration, when Mark called to say he had caught our supper, so I went back to camp and got the fire started while Mark cleaned the fish. Man they were good eating. We were setting around enjoying the fire when it started raining pretty hard so we went to bed and finally got some much needed sleep.

It rained all night long and was still raining when we woke up Sunday morning. I was laying in the tent listening to it rain, when Mark texted "want to go get breakfast" (he was sleeping in his car). I said "no, lets go run. then we will eat". It was obvious Mark didn't want to run in the pouring rain and I wasn't looking forward to it, but I really wanted to run while we were here.

It just so happened that we had camped just a couple of hundred yards from the Allegheny Trail, so we decided to run to Black Water Falls State Park. It was pretty tough going. The rain had turned the trail into a creek and the creeks into rivers, but it was so beautiful and it quit raining not long after we started running. We run to the park and even hiked down into the gorge near the base of the Black Water Falls. While we were at the falls, Mark told me that this was the very spot that he had decided to start his fight with his weight problem. WAY TO GO MARK. you have come a long way. We didn't run very far, but we had already been gone for almost an hour and a half, so we went back. We cleaned up a little and went to town to get lunch.

Mark was going to fish his way back home and we were going to stop at Seneca Rocks. Manon wanted to hike up to the top of the rocks. When we got there, we saw this sign.

Since the trail was closed, we decided to go to Cass. That was cool. We hadn't been to Cass since the kids were small. We didn't ride the train, we just looked at all the stuff we didn't get to see when we were there with the kids.