"Um, I'm not very good at reading maps."

"Are you serious?"

"Dead serious."

"Because I'm not either."

"I hope this doesn't end with one of us in tears."

(Any time we set out on a "just-the-two-of-us adventure," I have flashbacks (comical, now) to a certain New York City trip made the summer after I graduated high school... when after a particularly feisty disagreement on whether or not to wake up at the crack of dawn and stand outside in the pouring rain to be a part of the Good Morning America audience, I ended up screaming at my mother across Broadway, stomping down the opposite side of street, and bawling all 10 blocks back to the hotel).

We'd made the decision to take the "strenuous" trail to the top of Crowder's Mountain. After eating amounts of sugar and butter that'd make even Paula Deen blush the day prior, we thought it best. You know, torch those calories right off our glutes.

Strenuous, we found out, fully embraced steady inclines and the scaling of boulders. And I'm here to tell you, 4 miles on a mountain is not 4 miles on a treadmill. What started with a superior sense of confidence - as in, I'm 'bout to make this mountain my bitch - ended with jelly legs and minor heart palpitations.

BUT, the view at the top... worth every step. And thanks to making the acquaintance of a chatty elderly gentleman at said top, I now know that Asheville, NC is the place to go if ever in need of witch supplies.

"Because not many people realize it, but Asheville is full of witches."

(Cue puzzled looks)

"Oh yes, full of 'em."

(I'd heard it's a free-spirited town. Lots of hippies. But witches?)

"It's very easy to mistake witches for hippies, you know."

(Naturally).