We Love The Mountains...Even If We Get A Little Lost

June 14th we went back home to AZ for a visit with our families, and most of our time was spent in Greer up in the White Mountains. We just love going to the mountains, and seem to love it even more since we've moved to the "Prairie State" with no mountains anywhere in sight. We rented a huge cabin to stay in and enjoyed the great outdoors. On one particular day Josh, his mom, and I decided to go on a hike. We were picnicing right by a trail that was about 6 miles long and would take us directly back to the cabin. So the rest of the fam dropped us off at the trailhead and away we went. We figured, 6 miles, not bad at all. We'll get back just in time to help with dinner. I should mention we also brought along my inlaw's small dog and Josh's sister's large dog. So we hiked along a dirt path that was more like a road for a lot of the time, it followed a nice creek and took us through open meadows. We all knew we were headed in the right direction (and I really do have a good sense of direction) so it didn't REALLY cross our minds that we were on the wrong path. It did seem a little strange to us that the trail continued to look like a road rather than a trail and never took us through the forest as we expected.

After about 2 miles, we (LuCKiLy!!) we ran into some people on a go-cart. Feeling we better make sure we were headed the right way, I asked which direction Greer was, and they spoke words nobody ever wants to hear: "Oh boy, you're headed in the totally wrong direction!! Greers THATAway (pointing behind us). You've got a LONG way to go, there's NO way you'll EVER get there before dark!" We all just stared with blank faces. They offered to take us back to their camp to use their phone, but we opted to just back-track and head to our starting point. Luckily, I had come "prepared" and brought along my cell phone. We thought we'd just call the family and have them come back and pick us up. Well, it didn't help that a) we were way up in the mountains and I got terrible phone reception, and b) the battery on my phone was pretty much dead. I did manage to leave a few voicemails before it died completely, but we had no idea if they'd be received or not. At this point, I'm envisioning us stranded at the side of the road in the dark waiting for a ride that's never coming, or us wandering lost through mountains in the dark with no flashlight surrounded by wild bears and search teams looking for us. At least we had water.

Well, to finish up this long story, as we were backtracking the 2 miles, we happened across the REAL trail, pretty much at the beginning where we started. Josh, using his eagle scout skills, caught a glimpse of the--get this--trail MARKERS! Whadaya know. All we had to do was follow the trail! I guess it wasn't totally our fault we missed them because one had fallen down. And for the record, our senses of direction were right all along, we were right about where Greer was! The people on the go-cart were wrong. At least they told us we were on the wrong trail. We decided to just finish our hike and take the real trail back to the cabin, which ended up being a total of 10 miles rather than 6. It wasn't too bad for us humans, it was actually pretty fun and we never were too worried, but the poor dogs, esp. the little one, just about passed out when we got back. We even made it back before dark. And it turned out that someone did get my voicemail and they came to try to get us. Even though where we were staying was only 6 miles away, the main roads to get there had been closed off so it turned into a 2 hour event driving there and back. Thank you to Chris and Bill who tried to rescue us! Moral of the story is: don't go hiking without a map, and always remember to charge your cell phones!!