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Since I previously shared a couple of cartoons that describe me quite accurately, Nathan Pyle has come out with a couple more about hiking. Can't leave these out. The concept of the first one always makes me chuckle.
This one is marginally true. Actually, I don't like sweet cushions all that much, but what happens in the first 2 panels coupled with the scent of balsam is sort of like catnip to a cat for me.
It's a good day to hunker down. Actual temp -2° outside. We have the bathroom faucet dripping just in case. I did two rows on the afghan, but still have 6 to go because there were actually 8 to finish when I said 6. I really want to get this one done (so I can start a different one!). And then I have to do the edge.
I wrote 770 words in Vacation from Dead Mule Swamp. I edited a little, but I am waiting for responses.
I have stolen two cartoons to share here. The first one is by Nathan Pyle. It characterizes my attitude perfectly.
This one is, I'm afraid, a bit too true. I do occasionally simply bust out in song while hiking, and it's often this one, "The Happy Wanderer." In fact, I want this sung at my funeral.
It was a gray day. It was still so dark at 8 am, I wasn't sure it was time to get up.
I FINISHED one editing project a couple of days ago, and I FINISHED another one today!
It's been a long time since I've posted about any online games I might play. Actually, I gave up both of the ones I liked before the big hike, but Marie got me playing one different one again. Royal Match.
It's fun. It doesn't take the time commitment the other ones did. I usually play it to wake up in the morning. Anyway... recently they had a card set (you get extra stuff for collecting sets) with a hiking theme. I thought it was interesting what they chose.
Here are the best of the pictures I took from March 2022. I need to step up the speed of going through pictures. I have a program coming up quickly.
From March 2022, I've chosen what I think are the 10 best pictures to share, but there is a reason I don't like March. There's not much color. I always call it the gray and brown month.
I am saying these pictures are "best," not because they necessarily tell the story best, but because I think they are simply the best actual photographs. I've left them full size, so you can click on them and see them larger. That always makes photos look better. Every single one is tweaked a bit to reduce the blah, flat look of low light sky.
These are again, all in Ohio, but they get me almost to the Pennsylvania border.
This one is some of the pointed Ohio hills that eroded from a plateau, with farms.
My one artsy-fartsy shot for March that looks like anything.
Once in a while, there is a good photo that also tells the story of the hike.
Piedmont Lake on an almost sunny day. This isn't a spectacular photo, but as I said, nice lighting was hard to come by in March.
There weren't very many days with a lot of snow, but this was one of them.
Another hiker in the brown woods picture, but the valley in the middle helps.
And another snowy road. Can you tell I'm rather unimpressed with the March offerings?
More farms on hills. I actually love scenes like this, but as far as photos go, I didn't manage to take many nice ones.
Little Beaver Creek in the State Park of the same name.
Probably the best picture of the month has nothing to do with hiking. Bill took Sue and me out to eat at the Spread Eagle Tavern in Hanoverton, which is a hyper-historic canal town. It was a lovely place!
I should be in hyper mode myself. I have tons to do. But I'm having trouble getting motivated.
I went through the pictures I took from February 2022. I'm beginning to percolate ideas for the new program I need to put together. I also checked on getting permission to use a song I would like. Not happening. The cheapest plan is $1000. There are other options, but I thought I might as well check.
From Febraury 2022, I've chosen what I think are the 10 best pictures to share. I am calling them "best," not because they necessarily tell the story best, but because I think they are simply the best actual photographs. I've left them full size, so you can click on them and see them larger. That always makes photos look better.
They are chronological, so don't try to develop any meaning to the order! The are all Ohio. You may remember that Ohio was l-o-n-g.
This one is the farm of one of our favorite host families, Jeff and Kathy Crisler.
Denali hiking through the winter landscape.
And some winter landscape. There was a lot of it!
The focus isn't perfect on this, but I'm still pretty happy with it. I'm amazed that I caught the moment and that it's fairly good. A red-shouldered hawk.
This was the morning of stunning ice and blue sky. OK, you can see that for yourself. But it was hard for the camera to see the sparkles.
This one is more subtle, but I like the colors and textures, and the shaded halves of the tree trunks. Shawnee State Forest, I think. Near it, anyway.
Honeycombed rock is everywhere in Ohio. It needs the contrast with some sharp angles to make it stand out.
Next, we have water in the mill race at Stockport.
This is the back of a drying mushroom. No clue what one.
This is the Devil's Bathtub at Hocking Hills. Notice the waterfall, bottom left.
I did shopping and a bunch of errands in the morning, then my energy sort of ran out. I still did stuff in the afternoon, but nothing too physical.
It looked like today was going to be a questionable day for a hike. High winds and rain began last night. Things were still blustery and wet this morning. Several people cancelled. Those of us who did not cancel drove in real rain all the way to the trailhead. Even so, we ended up with ten hikers
Every single one of these hikes has had good weather. The worst we could complain of were a couple of days that were pretty hot. So we figured we were due to get wet. But.
We did not get wet! The rain stopped, and the sun even showed up intermittently. Enough to make a shadow. The temperature was in the 50s, which I consider perfect for hiking.
The colors are still not happening where I live. But this is an hour north. It was great to see that we might still have autumn color here.
This sassafras even produced an odd-colored Michigan leaf. They are usually almost all yellow.
Of our whole series, this was the hike with the most topography. Most of the trail hills are well-designed, though, so they aren't painful to hike. Some of the switchbacks also present nice photo ops.
One of the neat things about this section is that you can look across to the opposite side of the Manistee River. The views of fall color over there are always appealing, but very hard for the camera to capture. This isn't too bad.
In this case, the color is on our side of the river.
We knew there were only 1.5 miles to go when we reached Eddington Creek. We stopped for a snack break then climbed to reach the final mile which was on a railroad bed. Easy ending!
We had an interesting people encounter in this last bit of trail. More on that in a minute.
The ending was at Hodenpyl Dam, and Hodenpyl Dam Pond. It's pretty large- a lake, but the name is pond. Three of our group were camping out and hiking on northward for two more days.
It was a good ending for a good series of hikes, and lots of new friendships made. About 120 miles total hiked over the season- all the North Country Trail in the Manistee National Forest.
Now for the people we met. There was a group of six young people who asked us if we'd seen another couple (defined as a guy and girl- I do not mean to imply a relationship, since I have no knowledge on this topic), whom they described. We had not seen them. They gave one of our group a cell phone number in case we did see them. Then they split up and continued jogging down trails, hunting for the missing hikers.
We got to the end of our hike and one car was already on the way back to the start point to take someone to a car. I was also going there, and left just a few minutes later. As I came up to that vehicle, they were stopped in the road (narrow dirt- not a highway) talking to this missing couple. But they did not have either the cell number of the group leader or the number of the guy in our group who did take that number. I did have our guy's number. I told the kids to get in the car (their English wasn't too good), and made the call. He called the group leader. I took the kids back to the trailhead where their group leader came to get them.
The couple was lost. They had walked for four extra hours in full packs, not knowing where they were. I will say that they were neither cold (they had rain gear and hats) nor hungry, but the girl said she was starting to get scared.
I can't begin to tell you how many things are wrong with this scenario! Oh wait. Yes I can. And I will.
The couple did not have the cell number of their leader. They did not know where the group was going to be camping. They had a map, but apparently couldn't read it. They were unable to show us on the map where they had been or where they were. Somehow the group let this obviously inexperienced couple get separated from the rest of them. Apparently no one in the main group had the cell phone number of these kids (who said they did have a phone).
Since the kids had full packs on, I assume they had tent or tents. But it was starting to rain again by then, and it wasn't going to be long before dusk set in. I don't know if they had ever spent a night in the woods, let alone lost and by themselves. I don't know if they had the ability to start a fire, or if they had food with them (perhaps someone else had all the group food).
Plan, people. Communicate, people. There was no reason this became a near crisis. Make sure everyone in the group knows the destination and contact numbers. Keep track of your group members. If there are places where the trail splits or turns make sure everyone knows what to do at these junctions.
Well, I'm glad we were able to help, and keep this from becoming something serious. I hope they aren't deterred from going on another overnight hike, but that all of them learn some lessons from this.
North Country Trail, Upper River Road TH north to Hodenpyl Dam TH, 10.5 miles
Yup, this is my 3000th blog post (on this blog). I'd previously been posting on Xanga, a sort of pre-blog platform, with some friends for several years, and then did a short-lived blog called "Niblets from the Shark" that was more personal. Then I had the brainstorm to take the "Quality Day" exercise and make it into a blog that other people might enjoy (If you don't know what this is about read What is My Quality Day?). This was in October of 2008. Nearly 10 years ago. Blogging was in it's heyday at that point, and I signed up with Entrecard, CMF, and later Adgetize. I started more blogs than I could possibly keep alive. I tried to make money. OK, I made a little. More on that later. I have met a lot of good friends from around the world through this blog. A significant number of us are still friends on Facebook, and a few have made the transition to real life friends.
Are you ready for too many pictures and a bit of philosophy?
An awful lot has happened in 10 years. We had a dog, Maggie, and a cat,V-8, then. Now I have no pets. I never thought I'd live without a dog, but I want to travel, and society has little tolerance for people leaving dogs in vehicles any more. Even if the conditions are fine.
When I began this blog adventure, I was completely self-employed. I had several accounts designing and maintaining web sites. All but one of those is now gone. People figured out you could make web sites on blog platforms for next to nothing and slowly, my customers faded away. I did a long stint of content writing. I wrote on a LOT of different sites. Mostly, I didn't enjoy it. The one exception to that was a site called Shared Reviews, where I was making the most money. I put too many eggs in that basket, and when it went belly-up, that hurt. But I still have a lot of Facebook friends from that adventure too.
I started writing cozy mysteries. Now I am working on the fifth one! People seem to like my writing, and spending more time doing that is one of my future goals. I want to keep writing mysteries, finish the sequel to North Country Cache, write a technothriller, and some non-fiction.
Somewhere in there, I realized the content writing was making me nuts and not bringing in enough money. When the blog advertising networks folded- and that pitiful income went away, I couldn't make myself write enough pieces about things I didn't care about, and with so much dictated spin that it seemed dishonest. Yeah, I got a job in December 2010. That was the one where I took pictures for insurance companies. I really loved that job for about 5 years. I got to drive all over and see back roads and interesting places. Like this...
and this (Hawkins Road)...
But then, things changed, and the flexibility really went away. I quit that job in July 2016. Overlapping with that is the job in the mailroom at the Ludington Daily News. I started that in December of 2012, and I'm still there. It will never pay much, but I like the people I work with and it's quite physical, which I find satisfying. (This picture is NOT what the machine is supposed to do!)
My hope is that within a year I can quit and concentrate on writing. Fixing up the little trailer as a portable office is part of that dream. (picture from the week I brought the trailer home- December 2013)
You've followed me as I completed a major goal, to hike all the miles of the North Country National Scenic Trail (the first woman to do so).
I'm still in love with hiking and the North Country Trail. Lots of foot travel in my future for as long as I can walk.
My health is good. You've heard about almost all the issues- a new partial plate (not nearly as good as the one it replaced, I'm sorry to tell you.) was made in 2009.
I did get lymphangitis from a cat bite, and have also spent 3 years recuperating from a bacterial gut infection they never did identify, but I'm pretty much over the after-effects of the hefty antibiotics they gave me. Probably the only thing I haven't shared is that my left shoulder started coming out of joint after I fell on it in 2013. So now, both shoulders are shot. That has pretty much put the kibosh on my dream to do a long swim unless I get them repaired, which isn't likely.
Other than that, I'm good to go!
We've weathered a crisis I haven't put on the blog at all, but I'm still here. (You didn't think that just because I choose to focus on quality items that my life is all roses and sunshine, did you?) Om and I will have spent 49 years together in another month. (I know... it's kind of a miracle!)
I still can't decide what to be when I grow up. But I'll try some adulting as an author for the next round.
I have no idea how many miles I've hiked since 2008, but it's in the thousands. And I've learned hundreds of new plants. Thank goodness the number of uncompleted craft projects isn't quite that high.
I've been through 5 cameras; 3 computers; 3 phones; 2 cars; gallons of yogurt, iced tea and soup; and one God. One. Yup, I'm one of those people. Praise the Lord, All Glory to Jesus. God is Good.
Hope a bunch of you will come along with me to see what happens next!
