Roanoke GO FEST and Trail Sisters!

This weekend Roanoke celebrated with its annual "GO Fest"! Roanoke is such an outdoorsy town, we have an entire festival dedicated to all the fun things people can do here. I missed it last year, so made sure to take advantage this year. So I rode my e-bike downtown on Saturday. It was a bit crowded, but I got to see some BMX stunts, try on some cool hiking shoes, and hear some good music. But there were activities all weekend long. The one I really wanted to do was a hike organized by the Trail Sisters. I'd purchased some hiking shoes last Christmas and not had a chance to break them in yet, so this was my first real hike here. I rode my e-bike to the meeting place at a very cold 8:30am! About seven of us showed up to participate. Here we are on the trail. We were going pretty much straight uphill heading to The Star at the top of Mill Mountain. It must be a pretty popular trail because when we passed the buck, he could have cared less about us!It was a tough hike, but I was peretty darned proud of myself, I did okay... on the way up. Here we are at The Star, which is a Roanoke landmark that lights up over the city every night.Opposite the star is a fabulous overlook with a sign that tells you about all the mountains you can see from there. I hope to hike them too!I'll admit, my bad knee started acting up on the way down the mountain. It has a bad habit of locking up and becomes very painful to bend. I'm not sure what to do about it, although my new friend Angel trained to be a PT and offered me some exercises I can try to help. When we all got to the bottom, Angel, Ashton (our leader in the back of the trail photo), and I headed to Starbucks for an after-hike treat; then Angel and I went back to the festival to enjoy a silly Shakespeare production (all of his plays in 70 minutes!).
It was a fun morning, but it kicked my butt! Maybe I took on too much too fast? Hmmmm.