Berkeley Springs, Little Bennett Regional Park, Henderson Hall

Well, yesterday was .... interesting.

We drove out to West Virginia, just over the border to Berkeley Springs - the nation's first hot springs. Apparently George Washington used to go there to bathe. There's even a little stone-lined spring they call his bathtub. It's a state park where you can get a mineral bath and a massage for $40! It was definitely not swanky, though. More like a public bath house.

We arrived for our appointments and got whisked away to our separate sides - men on the right and women on the left. I was told to undress and wrap myself in a large sheet, then led back to the "Roman bath" which was essentially a large wading pool. The attendant held up the sheet while I climbed down the stairs into the pool of warm water where I got to soak for 15 minutes. She told me I could sit on the steps or do whatever I wanted - but I was not about to sit on the steps. They say they drain the water between each person, but it still felt a little, I don't know, unsanitary or something?!

When my bath was up, I was taken over to a room full of massage tables in stalls and lay down for my massage. She used olive oil, which was kind of interesting. There was no air conditioning, just fans blowing air around everywhere. It was surreal. The massage felt nice enough, then it was over! I went out to wait for Adam.

There was a guy waiting there to bathe who was wearing short shorts and a t-shirt, with a long ponytail. I was trying not to stare because something seemed a little funny about him, so I was staring at the ground when I suddenly noticed his feet. His toenails were no shit about 5 inches long. I almost barfed right there. The big ones were curled around over the ends of his toes - they were thick and brown. They looked like tree bark. TREE BARK. It was so, so, so, SO disgusting! I think I threw up a little in my mouth just thinking about it. All I could think was he's going in there to BATHE in a public bath house!! BAAAARRRRF!!!

Adam finally appeared about 15 minutes later with a bewildered look on his face and we left to find an ice cream parlor. His only comment initially was "that was special." And that his masseuse was called Humpty Dumpty. Later he asked me, "how was the towel over you while they were massaging you?" I said, "it was a sheet covering every part of me they weren't working on - I was all covered up...... why, where was yours?!" He said, "it was just a towel and it was all bunched up just covering up my butt crack.... like right over my crack, covering nothing else.... are you getting an image?!" I just stared laughing, and he said, "I KNEW IT!! I KNEW that was not NORMAL!!" Hahaha! No, it wasn't anything pervy - we don't think - it was just some old quirky dude - LOL!

Here's me and Adam after our massages with the bath house in the background. Yep, it looks like a public pool. The mineral content of the water is supposed to be really healthy for you. Don't we look all glowy? :P What you don't see is all the freaking gnats that were swarming us. I was DONE by that point. D.U.N. And Adam was of course was taking forEVER to take the picture, I was about to have a hernia. Can you spot my scar?

OK. Some more pics! This below is one from our hike at Little Bennett Regional Park on Sunday. The first part of the trail was called the Moundbuilder Trail, and you can see why - these gigantic ant hills were EVERYWHERE around the trail and the trail itself was literally CRAWLING with ants - they were all over the place. We walked quickly though there, I didn't want to stop too long and have them all crawling up my legs! It was creepy!

And here's Adam about halfway through the hike where we stopped for lunch in a little park by an old boarded up one room school house that was used in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Pretty cool to think kids used to come to school there! So different from today. There was even a little rope-suspension bridge.

We just got back from working out over at Ft. Meyer at Henderson Hall - the Marine Corps gym. Adam is Crossfitting now - he loves it. His workout today was some crazy pyramid of hand-stand push ups and L-pullups. Here he is doing the pull ups.

And the hand-stand push ups - they looked really hard and painful.

And here's me doing push-presses in my SuperSet t-shirt! I love it. I'm only putting up 65# - Adam was encouraging me to go for 100. Maybe I could have done that if I'd been fresh, but I was fatigued by that point and I was like, there's no way!

Train hard and expect success!