Thunderstorms, Rocks, and Bears, Oh My!

My fiancé and I are not the most "outdoorsy" people but we decided to try something different this weekend - a hike!  My fiancé did some research and decided that we should go to Shenandoah National Park.  So we stopped by our favorite bagel shop so we could "carb up" before the big hike.  We also got sandwiches in case we got hungry during our hike.  We started our drive and the sky looked pretty dark and scary.  I was getting nervous because I am deathly afraid of storms and the last place I would want to be stuck in a thunderstorm is in the middle of the woods.  About 20 minutes into our drive, the rain started to poor and the lightening was unbelievable.  At this point, I was hoping my fiancé was going to just turn around, but he assured me it would clear up.  We finally made it to Shenandoah National Park after about 1 1/2 hours and the sky had cleared up!  

My fiancé stopped and got a map of the hike we were going to do.  It was about 6 miles, downhill on the way there and uphill on the way back.  We parked the car and we were off!  The hike to the waterfall was pretty uneventful except that I fell a couple times on some rocks, but that's just me being clumsy!  I didn't think the hike to the waterfall was too bad.  We spent some time taking in the scenery and took a few pictures, then we were on our way back!  

About five minutes into our hike back, we ran into some hikers who warned us that they had just seen a black bear and for us to be careful.  I was terrified at this point but my fiancé and I had no idea what to do.  We tried to quickly hike back to the grounds, but it was pretty difficult since the hike back was all uphill.  My stomach was in knots because I was so scared that I was going to see a bear and the hike uphill was tiring me out.  Luckily we made it back to the camp grounds without running into a bear but we were exhausted.  We were so happy to be back to the campgrounds.  If it wasn't for the bear thing, I think this would have been a great experience, however, I think I'll be staying out of the woods for quite some time. :)