After spending about 10 days with one illness or another, last Saturday, Greg and I were feeling peak cabin fever. On top of that, it was a gorgeous day. So we talked about going for a hike – you know, a short, easy going hike to ease ourselves back into things.
We did 7.5 miles. And not a flat 7.5 miles. It was hilly, with an elevation change of 700ft from lowest to highest.
We use A LOT of tissues.
A few weeks ago, we had explored a new part of The Smithgall Woods Center State Park – the Tower Road. At the time, we went for time and just kinda rambled about. But later, we discovered that if you continue on that road and then make the correct turns, you can make that hike into a loop. So that’s what we did.
Everything was going swimmingly. It was a nice, warm day after a whole bunch of rain. We were happy to get out and enjoy the day — until we were about 2 miles from the end. We were walking along the graveled Shackleford Road, when we came to the creek.
We were NOT turning around. So we zipped off the legs to our pants (AH HA, knew that would come in handy); took off our boots, tied the laces, and put them around our necks; removed our socks and stuffed them into high pockets; and forded our way across the creek. The water came up to my knees and was moving very fast. I have never been so grateful for my hiking stick, because it saved my ass a couple of times.
We made it across without incident and then stopped to rest a minute and dry off our feet. Soon, we re-donned our foot gear and continued our way back to the parking lot.
Luckily, we did not have the corgis with us. That would have made things much, much more difficult. We typically do not take them with us on new hikes.
Over all, it was a beautiful and adventurous hike. We saw some butterflies, some tadpoles, and a huge tree with some interesting, old initial carvings in it.
The Loebick Mindset 