Last recorded hike was 24/52
25 was April 30th at Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, we hiked the Rock Garden trail at Charon's Garden and the Tower Trail.
26 was Tent Rocks on the 1st
27 was hiking on the caldera on the 2nd
28 was looking for dino tracks outside Mesilla, NM the 3rd
29 was backpacking at White Sands the 4th
30 was hiking back out! the 5th
We also did a mile+ walk around the Carlsbad Living Desert Zoo
31 was the walk into Carlsbad Caverns and around the Big Room and back out on the 6th
32 was walking to the highest point in Louisiana on the 7th
33 was backpacking to Alum Gap the 15th
34 was the hike to Ranger Falls on the 15th as well
35 was hiking out and the extra hike to Suter Falls on the 16th
36 was the Lake Trail in GA the 24th
37 was walking around Paradise Gardens and then the Marble Mine Trail the 25th
38 was Richard Martin end to end on the 29th and
39 was today, 9 miles at Wheeler.
*whew*
I have a sort of arbitrary way to split hikes. If it's a worthwhile hike, it's its own hike, even if it's the same day as another hike. If I walk a couple different places, but the total is 5 miles or less, I will lump them together. So Ranger Falls at 5 miles RT on top of the 4 miles to get back to Alum Gap is 2 different hikes. But the 4 miles out and the less-than-2 mile hike to Suter Falls is just one.
I am at 352 miles for the year, 'need' to be at 500 at the end of June to get caught up. That's an average of nearly 5 miles a day every single day in June. hahahaha Hmmm, I wonder if I can do it? We walked the 11 miles o the RM trail in under 4 hours, today we did just over 9 miles in 3 hours. It's not an all day thing any more to get in double digit mileage. It's just...boring! I keep trying to drum up hiking buddies, but no good. Karen can commit to once a week, Andrea just after work and she's only able to walk 2-3 miles. Melissa is too far away and works all week now, so...I guess I need to just buck up and go on my own, though I know I have friends with free time who claim to want to be in better shape. Oh well, words vs action. Karen and I outlined all of our 'fears' for hiking alone today. Then rated them.
1. animal bite
2. falling, particularly with ankle or head injury
Other people ranked pretty low as we are both aware that crazed killers will drag you down an alley, but don't really care to lurk behind a tree on some random trail. Trail-based attacks number in the single digits over the span of a decade. A woman is raped in the US every 107 seconds. That's what everyone fears, right? What your family worries about and other women and husbands and fathers who don't want you hiking alone. That you will be raped in the woods because it happens ALL over at the rate of 33 times an hour all day every day. Once every 5 minutes somewhere in this country a 911 call is made and a rape reported. Think of how many never tell. It's terrifying. 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted, 1 in 4 of those, before she's 18. These are things we need to talk about, but these are not things that need to keep women out of the woods.
Hypothermia, getting lost and rain in general are other considerations. It was kind of interesting to lay everything out there and see that at the end of the day, we are mostly worried about comfort.
Anyway, that's me all caught up. Tomorrow is an exciting day that's not a hike! Chan has a list of places she wants to go before she starts work in 2 months (ack!) and we are knocking off the first one.
