Log Hopping

Well being that we're country boys and our cousin is a city boy of the outdoorsy sorts, we figured a great thing to do while he was visiting was to take a hike in the woods. He was particularly in favor of that plan, since he had bought a brand new GPS the previous weekend. So we each put on our own hiking outfit, mine consisting of All Stars, Levis, and a Softshell, my brother's of farm boots, Costco jeans, and a sweatshirt, and my cousin's of waterproof/lightweight/really fancy and new looking hiking boots, Levis, and a fleece jacket and vest. Thus outfitted we headed out the door.

Probably the most important time of a hike in the woods is that immediately following heading out the door. At this point you must ask and answer some potentially life changing questions: First, are we going to stick to hiking along streams or go cross country? Second, where are we going to go cross country? Third, are we going to use dead reckoning or use a GPS to find our way to this ridge with a logging road on top? Fourth, who's going to be our GPS enabled leader? (the cousin obviously was the de facto for this one).

Time to enter the woods behind our fearless leader and cousin. "Oh, there's an elk trail...and it seems to go the direction the GPS says to go. Let's follow it." Up the side of a hill we climb (I'm pretty sure the elk went down that trail not up). "Hmm, there seems to be a fallen tree in our way...maybe more than one...maybe more like a few hundred." (Time for a side note: These trees happen to be related to something I mentioned in a previous post "Gutters in the Attic." As I mentioned in that post we have had a number of extremely large storms, including ones with hurricane force winds, which I also mentioned didn't help the loggers. The reason for this was that these winds blew over a major part of the forests particularly on ridge tops. So yeah, back to the story) By the time we had traveled about 150ft. (the GPS was obviously miscalibrated since it said 64.3ft.) over, under, and around these fallen trees, we had decided that they should make an organized sport of it. Maybe to be shown between boxing matches to dull the spectators sense of pain. Included in these courses could be bark without logs under it, tipping logs, muddy bogs, blackberry briers, and of course spraying down the course beforehand to make sure it was properly slick.

Well a quarter of a mile (541ft. by his GPS) later, we got to where this logging road was supposed to be. Guess what, we were still in a pile of over sized match sticks. Then he noticed, "Uh oh, I think there's some gravel down there." Yeah, we got to the road which was also covered in fallen trees, which we tried to follow until, "It's four o'clock and the sun goes down in half an hour according to the sun chart on my GPS. We better get home!"

Good Idea of the Day: Let's head for the closest civilization as fast as we can. That meant hiking/climbing/falling back across most of the fallen trees we'd crossed coming in. Finally, we emerged into the forest were we stumbled down a steep hill (my cousin mentioned something about a cliff afterwards), followed a quad trail until we reached the edge of our neighbors property, which happened to be patrolled by wolf/guard dog crosses. That led us to a detour across a creek, through some blackberries, etc. leading us to the road. Stumbling in the door my cousin proudly announced, "We hiked zero-point-three-one miles in only two hours!"


Just in case you hadn't figured it out, although these stories are typically based on real life I bend and or change the facts to suit my purposes. This also means that although I make my cousin out to be an idiot, he actually is a (although still way to civilized) a much better hunter than I am.