"You girls be careful out there."

“I’m passing out in this drive way.”

Arrived in Statesville, NC at 5:45 am, the drive was rough, did it by myself! A lot of fog and rainstorms in the mountains. We got up to Heather’s grandmothers house and passed out until 2:00 pm. Then we spent some quality time with grandma on mother’s day and got a feel for Statesville. That night we packed our bags for hiking the next day we had so much excitement, yet we were exhausted still from our long day.

View standing outside of Warren Wilson's admissions office

“It’s 6:30 am, I thought we were on Summer vacation?”

Heather and I drove to Warren Wilson, one of the most sustainable schools in the country about 900 students attend. It’s a pretty small private school. However it was amazing if you are self-motivating, love the outdoors and have a true passion for the environment. They have a Triad program there based off of 100 hours of volunteering, 15 hrs/week working on and for the campus and academics.

They hire barely any outside work and work the students do gets taken out of their housing bill. The students even helped build some of the buildings; this makes the buildings extremely sustainable and creates teamwork among the students and a greater respect for their campus.

Some people even walked around barefoot with no worries of stepping on broken glass from beer bottles or w/e students may trash their campus with. There’s also a campus farm where students can work and the food is prepared in the kitchen and actually served by the students, to the students. Unlike at Rowan were Sodexo won’t let you serve anything that isn’t Sodexo. This campus is truly made for the modern hippie there is yoga, composting in the cafe, mediation, fire dancing, drum circles, nature trails (for hiking and camping), and on top of it all the scenery is mind blowing. 

They were totally expecting us.

Underground Hippies

The things that turned me off to Warren Wilson were the people, they seemed awesome but they were also way more intense than I am about the environment. The sustainable living dorm composted their own feces. I don’t know about that haha… The typical Warren Wilson student was vegan, didn’t shave (including the women) wore very natural clothes (/exotic clothes) with hiking boots, hemp sandals or no shoes at all. Not shaving my legs and pits sounds awesome but I don’t know if that’s really what I want to do… There were some real mountain lady’s at that school.

Overall the school was a little too small, which means lack of privacy. The students were super super busy, which isn’t a bad thing, I just need some down time and I didn’t like how MANDATORY/Demanding work and volunteering, it was all a little too intense.

Heather outside the Art Dept.

Cultural Psychology

We sat in on a class of 7 students and a professor and it was like no other college class I have ever attended. It was a true discussion; the professor really picked the students brains, which created creative stimulating conversations. It was exactly what I was looking for class-wize. The professor knew her students and her students joked with her and felt comfortable around her yet give her the respect a college professor should have. 50% of the professors live on campus, which is cool, but I feel like I would not like that close of a relationship with my professors. Professors can live close to campus, but living ON campus is a whole other story. 

Street View of Ashville

Downtown Ashville: The Mellow Mushroom

      At Warren Wilson I asked about the art scene, and our tour guide persuaded us to go to downtown Asheville. He said that is where it’s at and a guaranteed good time. We got there and were pretty overwhelmed with stores, we asked around where we should go and go directed to a lot of cute creative-nifty stores, they were all out of my price range. The street art and art gallery’s there were quite impressive though. Check out the pictures below.

As I said AWESOME STREET ART

“Ap-pal-a-chain Trail or App-al-a shan Trail?”

After a long day at Warren Wilson and Asheville, we had the option to sleep over Warren Wilson but the plan was to go on the Appalachian Trail (AT) and camp for at least one night. The next night was suppose to storm and I wanted Heather to experience a good time wilderness camping. We also kind of wanted to take it easy for the rest of the day, we hadn’t been sleeping a lot. However, I just sat in the car thinking, we came here to hike the Appalachian Trail, and we are going to do it. This is the summer where NOTHING is off limits. I am not going to let anything stop me, not even myself. I turned to Heather smiled and said, “Well, we came here to hike the Appalachian Trail, and we are going to hike the Appalachian Trail.” 

Hot Springs, NC- very small southern town

I turned on the car and took the most BEAUTIFUL car ride I have even been on to Hot Springs, NC. The mountains here are mind blowingly huge and beautiful. They rise quickly and stand so strong, thick with greenery, looking completely indestructible. Driving through the mountains is fun and also scary, a lot of turns and steep big hills meaning a lot of speeding and recklessness on my part.

Our Packs- getting ready to leave

Hot Springs: No Ranger Station and No Hot Springs

            We arrived in Hot Springs hoping to find a rangers station to get the 411 on camping in the Appalachians. There were none but we saw some backpackers who started in Georgia. They were being dropped off by some friends to pick up were they left off, now showered and with clean clothes. They gave us the low down and some hiking tips, it was around 4:00 pm, we got ready and left for the trail at 5:30 pm. 

Sooooo excited! And totally OVER packed.

     “You’re going the wrong way”           

With high spirits and excitement for what’s to come we hear, “Are you guys looking for the trail?” from a rooftop. We were off to the wrong way, already… haha at least the guy saw us with our backpacks on and stopped us before we got too far…

My pack was my dad's and it was half the size of me

The Vertical Ascend on the AT

“I think I’m going to DIE."

 -Heather Merring

Then it was an almost vertical hike up the giant mountainside. Heather and I were pouring with sweat and we had just started up, thinking we were going to die, we took a look at the map and pushed on until the hike flattened out a lot making it a lot easier for 2 girls with heavy backpacks on to hike. It felt so empowering to push on past the sweat and tiredness, let alone being out of shape. We finally made it to a shelter 3.2 miles later… Where we met the coolest people, that have seriously impacted my life.