robglazebrook.com

First, trek on over to Megan’s journal, and read her entry from yesterday describing our walk last night. Then, come back here for a more accurate telling of the tale.*g*

She did beg me. That much is true. Really, I wanted to go anyway, but I made her beg first because it’s a lot more fun that way. She pouts and does nice things for me and promises all sorts of silly stuff just to get her way, which she would have gotten anyway. :)

So we drove to the park. Part of me thinks it’s silly to drive somewhere to go for a walk. I mean, it’s not like there wasn’t any open earth near where we lived, forcing us to go out on a quest for nature or anything. There’s dirt, and trees, and grass and bunnies and all that stuff right where we live. But anyway, we got in the car and drove north, looking for the park she saw on our way to the grocery store a week or so ago. The park is called Inis Grove, by the way. I started calling it pInis Grove, because it’s funnier that way. And before you label me immature, I think I should tell you that when I told my boss Dwight (who grew up in this area) that we went walking in Inis Grove last night, he said, “Ah, Anus Grove. Good park.” So ha.

We missed it on our first shot. We ended up at a golf course, and decided that walking around aimlessly on a golf course didn’t sound all that fun. Turns out we were really close to the park, though, and we found it on our second try. That should have been some sort of an omen.

We got to the park, and looked for a walking trail. We didn’t see one. What we ~did~ see was that we were at the top of a large hill that looked more like a cliff in some places, so we did the obvious thing and walked / stumbled / slid our way down the crumbling embankment, positive the path must be just beyond that last ridge of trees.

The path wasn’t there, but there was a creek at the bottom, so we hopped along the stones in the creek for a while, and eventually headed back into the timber. We found a lot of neat stuff back there. We found some sort of a playground / lookout tower / paintball target / teenage makeout facility that was pretty cool. After a bunch of wandering we even stumbled upon what Dwight has confirmed was the Skunk river. And once I convinced Megan that the big, scary black thing she saw jumping out of the trees near the embankment was not a panther, a monkey, or a dinosaur, she let me go see the river, too. Aside from the mosquitos (and whatever the dark thing stalking us was), it was nice.

Eventually, we got pretty tired, so we headed back towards the car. We found a walking path on our way out (I guess they did exist after all), so we followed it back to the park and headed for the parking lot.

Only, the playground equipment didn’t look familiar. And we didn’t remember that building being where it was. And my car wasn’t visible in the parking lot. And come to think of it, wasn’t the whole starting point of this mini-adventure the absence of the very trail we followed back? Turns out, we ended up in the wrong park.

I should mention at this point, I think, that I have no innate sense of direction, location, or geography whatsoever. I find my way to and from home every day based on habit, luck, and bus routes, not on any true understanding of the path taken.

Anyway, we were in the wrong park. So we did the obvious thing. We walked back into the woods and got lost again. I mean, if getting lost took us from one park to another, wouldn’t getting lost a second time negate the first and get us back where we started?

Nope. We ended up at some sort of a lodge, right on the edge of the road. We decided to take a different approach this time. We followed the road north, trusting it more than we trusted the trees. I’m better with street signs than I am with the angle of the sun and moss growing on trees any day of the week.

We followed the road north for a while, before determining that we were now in a decidedly urban neighborhood, with nary a park in sight. So we headed back south, found the park, eventually found my car, and went home.

Yeah. We’ll have to do it again sometime. *g*