Hiking

[Catrin]

Today was my birthday hike, and I....may have, ahem, over done things a bit

I've never been in Morgan Monroe State Forest before, and a friend and I had decided some time ago to do one of the 10-mile "loops". Loops SHOULD end where they stop, shouldn't they" Otherwise we should call them....I don't know...Horseshoe trails? Almost-loop trails?

First of all, the trails were great! Wide variety of terrain, LOTS of "up and down", many switchbacks, and thankfully very little of that one trail feature that I can't do. The ONE place where that existed required some creativity from me but I made it. I've pictures that I will post tomorrow, I am just too tired to play with the photos tonight.

11.3 miles in total with over 37K steps. The trails were beautiful, but the maps were awful, the trail-head initially hard to find and while we were never actually lost, we were sweating the possibility of losing the daylight in the woods. None of the signs had the actual trail names, and we had no connection to online mapping services. I will go back, but I will have some other mapping system on my phone or some other device.

Beautiful day for a hike! Afterwards, I started getting terrible ramps in feet, shins, and even thighs. After my hiking partner dropped me back at my car I spent an agonizing 30 minute drive home in my manual transmission car with terrible feet/shin cramps. I've seen this before, but never on the way home. I'm sure it will wake me up tonight - when I normally experience it. I was taking salt-stick capsules throughout the hike, drank over a liter, munched on my favorite trail mix during, and had a good dinner. It could be dehydration, or just plain over-doing things. I've never done THAT before...

Pictures tomorrow, I've a couple beautiful ones!