July 30, 2024 - Tuesday

I made it out to group today at 100 Akre Wood. It was, honestly, a bit of a disaster. We took this picture right before things got bad! We got there and were all disappointed when we saw that the creek had dried up. Almost immediately, Clemi stepped on a nail that went straight through her shoe and into her foot. Of course, our first aid kit wasn't in the backpack, but thankfully someone else had one on them. We decided to hike for about a mile, then turn around and come back. However, we did not follow our plans. We had hiked for about 40 minutes and were trying to decide if we'd turn around and come back the way we came or if we'd hope that the trail looped, when two kids who had run ahead alerted us of a creek that was down the hill. All of the kids were really excited, so we said we'd go down there for 15 min and then come back up to the trail. Once we were down there, though, several of the moms continued to wander along up the creek, rather than hanging out in one spot. We all ended up following, but ended up so far along that it became difficult to think we'd turn around, slog through the creek, then walk up the hill back to the trail. We decided to go off-trail and go up the hill where we were. This was a terrible, awful idea. Three moms were just gone, keeping up with the bigger kids, but three of us (less in shape moms) were left behind. One of them had a baby in her back on a carrier! We start climbing up the side of this hill and it was just COATED in mud, so we were slipping down, grabbing onto tree roots and bear-clawing our way up. I'm saying hill, but it was seriously SO steep, that you couldn't stand up straight at all, or you'd start to tip backwards. It probably took us 15-20 min just to get up the hill. We're trudging through poison ivy, sweating, red-faced, and honestly very, very scared we won't make it up! But half of our kids were already at the top! On the way, someone stepped on a ground nest of yellow jackets and they came swarming out and attacked one of the 3-year-olds we had with us. He ended up being stung 5 times, on his face, armpit, chest, back of his arm, and ankle. :( So, of course, he howled and screamed for the rest of our off-trail hike that seemed to last forever. Even once we got up the hill, we probably had another 15 minutes left to walk. We finally saw a trail and the two moms with me said they didn't give a f*** anymore. They weren't following the group through the poison ivy and were going to just follow the trail, even if it meant a longer hike. It did lead us back to the beginning, thankfully, and the three of us headed home. I think the other moms must not have had such a hard time of it, because they decided to stay and have a picnic lunch together. I was SO done!