Total Eclipse Vacation: Day 4 (I'm Married to a Mountain Goat)

If you missed Day 3 of our Total Eclipse Vacation, you can catch up HERE

I slept a bit better last night, full of real Sudafed! I'm still extremely stuffed up, but no sinus headaches or migraines, thank God. I won't gross you out, but there's mucus now, which indicates possible sinus infection... I slept until about 8:30, then read for a bit until Hubby woke up. I took stock of myself and decided that I felt well enough to do the Rocky Valley Trail at Pinnacle Mountain, one of the trails I was looking forward to hiking on this vacation. I drugged up with Sudafed, plus Aleve and a Xyzal before we left. 

We found an existing Guthrie's for lunch, which was one of our favorites many decades ago, when there was one near home, and it was just as tasty as I remember! 

Ain't nothin' like a 3pc and cheese for your fries!

We drove south toward Little Rock and discovered a tiny town called Weiner. Yes, of course we stopped for photos! 

Congrats to Kyra!

Everyone loves an all-American Weiner

Weiner seemed to be really tiny, with not a lot of "everyday" businesses, but looking it up on Google Maps, they have lots of "Weiner" places, such as Weiner City Hall, Weiner Gym, and Weiner Library. This Weiner must be a grower.  

It's so quaint and cute!

Pulling out of Weiner, I began noticing that there were a lot of Arkansas sheriffs on the road, and duh... probably because of the massive influx of people for the eclipse... I reined in my (typically speedy) driving; I certainly don't need to be pulled over while we're on vacation! We got to Pinnacle Mountain around three, and I kept looking at the specific park signs to ensure that I parked in the correct parking lot.

Pinnacle Mountain (this isn't what we climbed)

Hubby, who had no idea why I was doing that, seemed grumpy and kept telling me to just pick one! He told me later that he wasn't grumpy, but excited! He was ready to get hiking and thought that all of the parking lots were the same, and he just wanted to get out of the car and start! There is a beautiful Quarry Pond at the beginning of the park that was amazing, and then the trail devolved into nothing but, well, a rocky valley. 

Instead of a typical v-shaped valley, though, you go down, then up, then down, then up again, like a very shallow w. The downhills had grades of -10 to 13% and the inclines went up to almost 15% climb. You start at 482ft of elevation, drop to 266ft, then climb back up to 525sf, before returning to the start at 482ft. For the most part, we had the trail to ourselves, except for passing two other couples. Both of them looked like they were breathing heavy, so I didn't feel quite so bad. 

Trail Map from AllTrails

Needless to say, this trail that was listed as "Moderately Challenging" was extremely challenging for me, as I recovered from sinus blockage on top of being fat and out of shape!! 

AllTrails info about the Rocky Valley Trail

We had to stop multiple times for me to catch my breath, and for the entire time, I was behind Hubby, who was traipsing across the rocks and boulders like a damn mountain goat (but he was having so much fun that this entire hike was 1000% worth it!)

Unfortunately, because I was having a hard time, I had to skip the connecting East Quarry Spur and the Maumelle River Overlook. I'm not super-sad that we didn't do it, but disappointed in myself for being sick and unable to do a lot of what I wanted to do on this trip so far. It took about two hours to complete just the Rocky Valley Trail, so in the long run, it may have been better that we skipped the Quarry Trail, because we might have been caught in the valley after the sun set. 

Exhausted, in a good way, we headed home. In Jonesboro, we cruised around, looking for something for dinner, and noticed a lot of people being pulled over by cops. I was giving lots of the Southern "two finger wave" each time I saw one on the road, before finally Hubby asked what I was doing. I said I was trying to 'earn cop karma' by waving at every officer I saw. 

Didn't work. 

We got pulled over, too. 

The officer who pulled us over said he ran our plates and there was no car insurance attached to the vehicle (how do we do that with a rental). I realized that the printed copy of insurance - that I printed just for vacation - was still over at the house in my big purse (women, you know what I mean). I tried to pull up Progressive via my email, but that link was expired. I searched my phone and there was no PDF there... Finally, I was able to pull up the Avis rental agreement, which had my name and driver's license on it, which he matched to my physical license, and it was satisfactory - he told me to carry the hard copy from now on. 

After that, fearful that we were going to get pulled over again at any minute, by a much less nice cop, we settled on take-out from Freddy's Steakburgers. Hubby got a burger meal, and I got a kid's chicken tender meal. I can't taste them, of course, since I'm still so damn stuffy... I only ate one before I gave up. Maybe I'll have it for breakfast (spoiler alert... I didn't). As soon as dinner was done, I moved the printed insurance card to my quick wallet, then downloaded and saved a digital version on my phone (and "favorited" it so I can find it again!) Exhausted, I conked out immediately!