My First Time Getting Lost On The Trail

Well, you knew it was bound to happen - getting lost - especially from someone who is directionally challenged and reading a map usually results in me saying "huh?" after staring at it for quite some time.

This last weekend a running friend and I went out on a normal early morning trail run. She needed to be back at a certain time, and I needed to be home at a certain so that Hubby could get to work. Nothing out of the normal there - we are used to super early mornings runs before the world wakes up.

Since we wanted 5 miles, we decided to take a different trail. We took one of the more difficult trails which led us farther up. We came out at the clearing where we heard a bear
either climbing down or climbing up a tree. I know my heart skipped a beat for a moment. I've yet to run into a bear on the trail.

After that moment, we got a little turned around about the re-entry. We took a different one. And by doing so, this put us on another part of the trail that we didn't really recognize. It didn't take us long to get turned around.

It's amazing how quickly you can get turned around out there! Everything started looking familiar, and then nothing looked familiar. So we turned around. At first we didn't really panic - we had time. We were just a little turned around. And then it got worse, and worse, and it was past time that my friend needed to leave, and we were still somewhere deep in the woods.

I had pulled out my phone and pulled up a map that didn't really seem to help. FINALLY we figured out the map and the trail and with shouts of happiness as we made it back to our cars where we sped off to try to get home.

Check out the map. If we'd just closed the gap we'd been out on time. Instead we turned around and did another entire loop (with lots of back tracking) before we made it out.

Lesson learned - always carry a map. I should have pulled out my phone earlier to try to figure out where we were. And sometimes it's best to just continue the loop instead of back tracking back and forth and back forth.

I was pretty sore after our trek up and down the mountain, but I was able to get out yesterday for a 4 mile run on the Appalachian trail.

And today, I met a friend to hike up to Table Rock. She's never been before and wanted to go. This is a view along the trail.

It was super windy today, but lots of fun to hike with a friend. I love the Appalachian trail. 

View at Table Rock

And no matter how many times I hike or run the trail, it never gets old!

 

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