Table Rock Group Date

I had the wonderful opportunity the other day to visit a popular hiking spot in Southern Oregon, Lower Table Rock. This visit was one of those wonderful group Mormon dates which as a 26 year LDS women I love and also loathe in the same breath. Yes, it is a wonderful opportunity in a casual setting to get to know someone, but then there is also always the dude that somehow did not get the memo that he needed to bring a date/ he was to lazy to ask someone, that you don't want to shun as the third wheel, but... you kinda do, and so was it in this case.

The 5 of us singletons piled into a 4 person car and started the short dive to the trail head. My date being a super gentleman sat in the back with the 3rd wheel and the other girl. She for some reason wanted to sit in the middle back, with her feet on the hump, other than with her date in the front. I, only superficially knowing the driver, was a bit concerned about this, did he have bad breath or some other offensive personal hygiene issue that I too should be made aware of? It turned out that it was none of those issues, it was that he was pretty much in love with Taylor Swift, which we listened to, of course, while he sang/ tried to sing to all the songs. Not that his singing was offensive in anyway, but a man in his late twenties trying to hit all the notes in "Love Song", come on dude, not going to happen( Bless his heart).

After our T-Swizal music marathon we arrived at the trail head. We gathered our things from the trunk; jackets, water and in Third Wheel's case a can of soda, ( what?) and then closed the trunk, or tried to. When trying to close the trunk it sounded if it was hitting something, and so started a testosterone filled 15 minutes or so of knifes being happily pulled out and then jamming them into the locking mechanism to some how fix it by.... I actually don't know what they were trying to accomplish with that one.... Then by taking turns of progressively slamming the trunk harder and harder to make it close, and then sitting on it and bouncing up and down to see if that would do the trick. This great display of human masculinity was, I'm sure, for my benefit, but it turned out looking like a group of monkeys trying to open a locked box, I was just waiting for one of them to grab a rock and start to beat the trunk with. But I, wanting to start the hike before dark or before I died, opened my camelback and fished out the rope that I fortuitously had brought and my multi-tool, gave it to the boys and told them to tie the trunk shut so we could just get started. 3rd Wheel stood there for a second perplex at the thought of one: a women having a knife and rope and knowing how to use them, and two: having a women be more prepared for such an event as he was, I'm sure, an Eagle Scout. After the shock wore off of their egso being bruised,they all three worked very hard at reclaiming their man hood by affixing the rope to the car using all the knots they could remember from their days a scout camp.

And so started the hike. The hike it self is a rather short and steep, a 3 mile round trip, but nothing that the average person couldn't handle. It turned out that the other girl was not quite in average shape. She looked like dark haired Victoria Beckham( aka scary spice) but not quite as pretty and who really liked harry potter and cut her hair to match. Anyway, long story short, she was slow and stopped a lot. Her date, Mr. Swift, was kind enough to tag along with her as 3rd Wheel and my date and I walked at a normal human pace. The rest of the hike up was uneventful other than 3rd Wheel making Wookie noises ( I'm assuming trying call for his mate) and my date doing bird calls. The top of table rock is as one might assume is flat and has vernal ponds, which is a nice way of saying it's super marshy and you will get you feet wet. But other than sloping around by the ponds it was very pleasant and I got a few nice shots in.



Because of the snail pace of Spice to get to the top we had only 20 minuets until we had to head down as the sun was setting. Scary Spice also had a wonderful idea so we wouldn't be hiking in the dark, we should run across the top of Table Rock back to the trail. She was very excited about this idea, I can only guess that she wanted to show us all that it was the steepness of the trail that had caused her to be slow not her lack of stamina. This was good idea for about 15 seconds and then she had to stop again. She said that wasn't it strange that someone as skinny as she was wasn't in better shape. When she said that I had an a sudden urge to push her skinny self into one of the vernal ponds. Yeah, its so funny that one person could read Harry Potter all day and eat bean dip and potato chips and stay so thin and another could eat hummus and carrot sticks and run 6 miles a day and not lose any weight. Hilarious? I think not. In protest to the previous statement I continued to jog across Table Rock with my date and 3rd Wheel and left Spice and Mr. Swift to bring up the rear. I stopped a few times to catch the sunset though, it just couldn't be missed.


The end of the hike was dark and quite other than the sound of wet shoes sloping down the trail. We drove back to the individuals cars that came, my date dropped me off at home on whom deposited a friendly hug. THE END.
And so ends another Mormon group date not bad, not great but a pleasant enough way to spend a evening.