New Shoes and New Friends

I was armed with the print outs and ready to shop. But I thought I'd better do some more research and find out where they sell these shoes or others like them. Back to the search engine. The first brand I was looking at (Columbia) had the closest retail store as Roanoke and that's a 3 hour drive, so I scratched them off my list. Then the other ones (The North Face) had one within 18 miles of me. Whoopee! It was a little shop at SnowShoe Mountain. Well, I live in this area and know for sure that SnowShoe is more than 18 miles from me but it is a lot closer than Roanoke. So I called them to make sure and sure enough they had the brand and guess what, they had the other brand too. I grabbed the credit card and car keys and off I took. Just out of curiosity I reset the tripometer. There are two ways to get to Snowshoe from my house so I went there one way and back the other. The scenic route was 51 miles and the sensible route was 41 miles. I always thought that the map sites were quoting mileage as the crow flies and now I'm sure of it. Oh, well, it was a pretty day so I opened the sun roof, turned Jimmy Buffet up loud and just enjoyed the drive.

I ended up not getting either brand. I was looking for a light weight hiking shoe so my footing would be good on the gravel and then on the trails (there are hundreds of them around here) when I decide to venture out a little. I ended up getting a brand called Sanoma and they are way cool. Extremely light weight and very flexible and best of all they had the best arch support.

When I got to the little store there was a sign on the door that the sales lady had stepped out and wouldn't be back until 12:00 noon which was 20 minutes from when I arrived. ARGH! I had just called her and told her I was coming. My first thought was, "Why didn't she wait for me?" Then I cooled down and decided that since I had 20 minutes to wait on her I'd just get my 20 minute walk in so off I went, around and around the resort. It wasn't as flat as I've been doing in front of my cabin but I knew I'd benefit from it and did. And it was nice to walk somewhere different. See, Cammy, I found a new place to walk yesterday too. I was so excited with my new shoes that I was disappointed that I'd already gotten my walk in but I wore them home and enjoyed them on the trek back to the car, which wasn't really close to the store. All the shops at SnowShoe are in a little court yard kinda place and you have to park a distance from the court yard to get to them.

On the way back (going the sensible way) I stopped at a local hardware store and bought another humming bird feeder. (Now that makes 5, and I still can't find the other 4.) The hummers are happy now and I'm glad.

I'd like to take a little time to thank all of you out there for your support, opinions and all around help. I am so glad that Cara talked me into starting my own blog. It sure has expanded my world and you are keeping me going on this slow journey. And you've turned me on to walking. What wonderful people you are!!!!!