After pitching a big hissy last night about not lollygagging around the Group Home all morning before getting out hiking, I awoke bright and early to the looooooverly sound of rain sleet and wind. Ugh.

Whyyyyy was I in such a full-tilt-boogie rush to get up and outta here? It was fugly outside and something was flapping against the side of the cabin in the wind but I couldn’t tell what it was because it was so blasted dark out! As challenging as it was, I put breakfast materials out on the stove for the GG to cook up and FORCED myself out the door for a quick walk down to the point and back (mile or so round trip). It wasn’t particularly nice out but it really wasn’t all that bad either. It wasn’t all that cold and I didn’t get too wet and I was heartened by the sounds of duck hunters shooting out in the lake. If they could get up and go out on the LAKE, I could certainly go hiking.

I will not begin to try to coherently describe our trip over to the chosen trailhead today. Ever-changing types of precipitation, a stop in Kalkaska to meet up with the UU. 5000 beeceeclettists racing from Kalkaska to Traverse city in The Iceman Cometh (and the Iceman *does* cometh to these parts, make no mistake, and it seems he is coming soon this year). An intersection that we won’t talk about and areas of no phone service. Eventually, a beauteous if somewhat wet hike on the North Country Trail. Here are the Twinz of Terror doing their usual schtick of figuring out where under the sun we are and not (thank you Zeus) eating pistachio nuts.

In truth, we all knew exactly where we were. This section of the NCT is particularly well groomed and marked and we *mostly* had good cell service and there was no issue about being lost at any time today.

Sometimes I can be sooooo stoooopid. When we arrived at the shallow but fast running little river below I actually thought that we would have to *cross* the river on this tree. I was having a bit of a hissy about that. “I am NOT going over that log”, etc. and the Twinz (who probably thought I was nuts plus they were getting me back for the whole intersection thing) egged me on with, “Yeah, and *you* get to go *first*.”

EVENTUALLY I swung my bird brain left and saw trail blazes. The trail DID NOT CROSS THE RIVER at all. Instead, it hugged the riverbank and that is how I randomly pointed my loverly iPhone down and got this almost kind of watercolor like photoooo. I have to add that I posted this on facebook and quite a few people really liked it. I do too but really, it was random iPhoneography. I was standing there in the rain juggling my phone, glubs, an umbrella and a hiking pole. I took plenty of other photooos today that I did not post and will delete.

When I found a telephone booth got back to the Frog Hopper, I switched from leggings and wet socks into a skirt, tights and dry socks and then we cruised on up to Traverse City where, after some fumbling, we found the Bum Steer (long story there) where we split a steer burger for lunch and then headed back to the Group Home via our fave Best Choice market and a gasoline station. Taaaarrrred in a good way. Fuzzy around the edges and my face feels hot but in an outdoorsy kind of way rather than feverish and it felt sooooo good to wash my feet this afternoon!

Love you all and good night,
KW

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 8th, 2014 at 6:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.