I took the day off today and got up bright and early to go to the Portage Lakes State park for a hike in my kilt. And winter coat, boots, scarf, gloves and hat.<\/p>\n
I got lost driving there, somehow, and of course ended up in Barberton. If I’m going to get lost while driving, I inevitably end up in Barberton. No one knows why.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I finally got there and parked my car in the first lot – then set out for my hike.<\/p>\n
And, unsurprisingly, I had the whole park to myself. I saw a couple of maintenance trucks when my path took me near a parking lot, but otherwise I was alone.<\/p>\n
It was peaceful and quiet. Kind of somber with the bare trees and maybe a little lonely.<\/p>\n
I took the Shoreline Trail and though I lost the trail a few times, I wasn’t really lost. I would soon find a signpost and I was back on track. I saw some swans, some loons, and a woodpecker, but no people.<\/p>\n
I started to get a little tired and decided to head back for my car.<\/p>\n
And then I got lost.<\/p>\n
Not, “I’m going to die alone in the wilderness and wolves with gnaw on my bones”, but “This is fairly annoying”<\/p>\n
I stayed lost for a bit and my sense of direction was actively working against me. I did find a road and figured I was in the home stretch, but I ended up going the wrong direction.<\/p>\n
Finally, I got out my phone and fired up Google Maps to look for the entrance to the park – by foot. I headed West – against my criminal sense of direction – and it said I was still 17 minutes away.<\/p>\n
And then the sky opened up and the snow came down in a sudden squall. Visibility dropped to a few yards and I started looking for the wolves. And regretting that I didn’t wear underwear under my kilt. I don’t know why that suddenly bothered me, but it did.<\/p>\n
I confirmed my direction again with my phone, then put my head down and forged ahead.<\/p>\n
The sky cleared in a few minutes with nary a wolf in sight and I soon found the main road and then my car.<\/p>\n
I was tired and cold and hungry – and feeling more that a little stupid. But I was still glad I went. Not sure how far it was, but lets call it 4 miles.<\/p>\n
I took a hot shower when I got home and there’s pizza baking in the oven. Good way to spend my morning – but next time I’m picking up a map of the trails before I head out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I took the day off today and got up bright and early to go to the Portage Lakes State park for a hike in my kilt. And winter coat, boots, scarf, gloves and hat. I got lost driving there, somehow, and of course ended up in Barberton. If I’m going to get lost while driving, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2172,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171\/revisions\/2172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}