I have been meaning to chronicle the adventure Scott and I had in Mark Twain National Forest over Memorial Day weekend for some time now and I wasn't really sure why I was putting it off. I have been finding myself with a lack of focus and a case of procrastination more often than not these days so I decided to take some time and figure out what was going on. Turns out that I am busier now that I DON'T have afulltime job and am shooting myself into so many directions that I think I've overwhelmed my circuitry. I downloaded a little book called the Un-procrastination guide and read it in one sitting (it was only 65 pages...purposely short for those who would procrastinate reading it if it were any longer). Apparently multi-tasking isn't really such a great thing since you cannot really give true focus to any one thing. Also, I was setting some very unrealistic expectations for the things I wanted to accomplish, especially regarding the timeline I wanted to complete them in. Essentially I was setting myself up for disappointment with me, which is the worst kind. The deadlines and expectations I had were with me alone and I kept coming down on myself pretty hard when I didn't follow through. What I realize now is that I shut down because deep inside I realized that I was setting myself up for failure so why bother even starting? So now I am adjusting. Slowly, but I can see the difference in my attitude and approach to those projects I want to finish. I choose something that I can commit to and then schedule a timeframe to work on it. I work for 15-30 minutes and then take a break for 5 minutes and so on until my timeframe is up or the project is finished. There are some things that will never be finished of course...yard work and landscaping, housework, etc, but this approach seems to be working for me. One thing at a time. The other major obstacles keeping me from being productive were all of the distractions around me. I was getting sucked into them and before I knew it an hour had passed and I hadn't done anything I set out to do. That was aggravating. So now I work on one thing and set a timer to keep myself on track. It seems to be working, seeing as
I am now finally writing the blog that I've been meaning to write for almost two months...
And now, onto The Big Piney Trail in Mark Twain Forest.
Both Scott and I love to hike and experience the outdoors, heck we spent our first date camping in Death Valley. So when the Backpacker magazine came in January describing the Big Piney we marked the page. We made the decision to tackle the 17 mile loop over the Memorial Day weekend since Scott had a 4-day and we could spend Friday packing and prepping and then hike Saturday and Sunday, leaving Monday as a rest and recoop day. I will freely admit that the Army is extremely helpful when it comes to hiking gear and Scott has also acquired some very nice gear that makes our excursions even better. Needless to say we have good stuff. But for this trip we decided to bring the dogs along...yes, both of them. We had purchased running leashes that were stretchy and also clipped around our waists so we would be able to keep our hands free. As a last minute purchase, we also bought a pack for the dogs. Just one, and the plan was to let Chloe carry it for as long as possible since we figured it would help slow her down just a hair. The pack contained two water bladders which we filled and put back. Then we put the pack onto Chloe. Being that it was the night before we were leaving and she was wearing it for the first time, we realized right away that it wasn't going to work.
Poor Chloe staggered from side to side under the 9 lbs of weight. So we took everything out and put in the only thing we could think of...the pillows. She still wasn't very happy about it...Getting to the trailhead was an adventure in itself. It took us 5 1/2 hours of driving and then another 1/2 hour of trying to orient the map to our surroundings. What we discovered immediately upon getting out of our car was that the humidity was so high that we were sweating before we even hit the trail. In addition, as we hit the actual trail we ran into a group of trail riders on horses. This would prove to be the bane of our trip since the horses had turned an already muddy trail into soup.
As you can see in this photo of Chloe and me at the trailhead, my pack was fairly small. I carried approximately 35lbs to include dog food and water (which weighed a lot!) along with much of the rest of our food and my personal stuff (Scott carried approximately 65lbs to include our tent, and cooking gear). I thought I did a fairly good job of packing until I realized that I forgot the inserts to my hiking shoes and I chose to wear cotton socks. Not smart. Especially not smart since we would be trudging through a trail that more resembled a mud bog. As I think about it now, I am beside myself wondering why the heck I didn't stop and change into my wool socks right off the bat. Hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it...
The trail itself was pretty. All of the recent rain made the forest a thousand brilliant shades of green with little spots of color from the wildflowers scattered about. It wasn't a terribly difficult hike but after 7 miles of hiking in wet shoes I was ready to stop and set up camp. The last mile was almost all downhill with a bunch of switchbacks that Chloe was just befuddled by. She would consistently cut straight down the hill instead of turning on the switchback and just couldn't understand what she had done wrong when we pulled her back and showed her the correct route.
We finally dragged into camp around 6pm. However, much to our dismay, "camp" was actually a full campground, complete with an outhouse and many campers with cars. We were less than thrilled to know that we had just spent the afternoon hiking through muck in wet shoes with wet dogs and heavy packs only to find out that we had reached the Griswold family campground (for those of you wondering who the Griswolds are, think National Lampoon). I was infinitely jealous when I saw Scott strip off his shoes and socks and put some nice cushy flip flops on. I hadn't thought to bring mine (he would later give me his to wear-love that man!). We set up camp and Scott went off to find some firewood. Nothing was dry so no fire for us. Fortunately we brought the jetboil and in no time our one pot wonder meal was ready..... Mmmmmm! It also proved to be a perfectly good marshmallow cooker (one cannot go camping without having s'mores...that would be sacrilege!). After dinner we were so bushed that we crawled into our tent, stripped down to the bare minimum to stay cool and closed our eyes.
Unfortunately sleep would be far off. You see, although we (especially Scott) had toiled for several minutes on each dog, they were both LOADED with ticks and when we shut off the lights the ticks jumped ship from the dogs (they had their flea & tick protection) and onto us. Talk about the heebie jeebies! I felt like I was crawling...yuck! Scott picked off so many ticks that I stopped counting and as soon as he declared me tick free, I threw on my long pants and a long sleeve shirt. I was soooooo skeeved out! Then I went about picking ticks off of Scott and finally we scoured the dogs one last time. By that time we were so exhausted we couldn't fall asleep very easily (not to mention that this was Chloe's first tent experience and she did not care for the idea that the people get the mats and sleeping bags and the dogs sleep on the end).
Although our sleep was not very restful, I still felt infinitely better when I awoke in the morning.
We cooked our morning one pot wonder meal (Muesli-yum!) and of course coffee and broke camp. We decided to take a short cut that would scratch about 2 miles off our our day. The short cut would allow us to walk on a dirt road and keep us off of the muddy trail for awhile. I was overprotective of my feet (which felt surprisingly good considering they looked like golden raisins) and put on both pairs of wool socks, which helped immensely. My feet were snug as a bug in a rug (albeit a damp rug since my shoes were still wet). I was also grateful that we now had less food and water to carry, lightening the load for both Scott and me. Scott is such a great person to do outdoorsy things with because he is so even keeled. He takes everything in stride which has a calming effect on any situation. We finished packing and headed off for day two of our trek.
Day 2 was hot and muggy. We had about 8 miles back to the car and even the dogs were dragging towards the end. When we merged back onto the trail it was still messy, but much of it had dried, making the hike so much easier on all of our feet. Chloe still managed to find fun along the way, jumping into ponds, bouncing after a frog in the brush, zigzagging from one side of the trail to the other making sure she wasn't missing anything. Maggie, ever the instigator, would occasionally let out a low "WOOF" which would send Chloe into a frenzy trying to figure out what she was missing out on. Maggie would then casually walk on like nothing happened. I swear she was smiling...
Here's the old man rock that I climbed with Maggie. Aren't those background colors just marvelous!!
Scott and Chloe taking a break in one of the many times we crossed this stream...
About 2 miles before the trail's end, Chloe decided she was done. She literally plopped down on a cool rock and wasn't moving. We coaxed her up to this area off the trail and stayed for about 20 minutes until she was ready to go again. Chloe really does not like the heat. She definitely does NOT get that from my side of the family-lol
This is the waterfall that was pictured in Backpacker magazine and ultimately brought us to the hike...it looked much bigger in the photo, go figure. It was still very picturesque and Scott commented that it would make a great place for a romantic night of camping since it was so close to the trailhead. I tried to get Chloe and Maggie into the water but neither really had much interest. Chloe however was very interested in what was going on behind the waterfall...
We did not hear a peep from these two during the entire 5 1/2 hour ride home...
Scott took this photo of the butterflies that were everywhere during our trip. There was a little girl on our way out of the campground who had them landing on her. It was an angelic site, with the sun behind her, creating a halo around her body and all of theses beautiful blue butterflies landing on her. We stopped just to watch her for a few moments and enjoy the sanctity of the scene.
All in all, this was a great adventure. I truly love the challenge of pushing the limits of my comfort zone to include as many experiences as possible. And although this trip was full of challenges, I still walk away grateful for the chance to get out there, especially since I got to spend the time with the one I love the most :)
