My first digression from my plan was due to a man and his dog. A perfectly fine-looking man and fine-looking dog, but when they turned in the direction I wanted to go I knew it wouldn't work. Ed gets worked up when someone, even without a dog, is in front of us, so I continued north, joined with the yellow and headed towards the prehistoric turtle head boulder.
It was slow and pleasant with the sweet fragrance of honeysuckle. We continued on to the spider and here I made my mistake. I decided to go west, toward the vicinity of Pepsi Lake. Poison oak was abundant, the trail narrow, and we gradually made our way toward snapper creek. Just when the creek came into view we encountered a very large, flat rock. I stepped carefully as I went across, because though it wasn't wet, we had rain earlier this week, and I know how deceiving an apparently "dry" creeky rock can look.
I don't know how it happened but my feet literally began slipping to and fro, and somehow I stayed upright. I felt like a bad cartoon, then I b e g a n to f a l l. I landed with a splat on the large face of the rock, and stunned, I sat, well actually I was sprawled out, for a moment. As soon as I got my head about me I quickly looked in all directions to make sure no one saw me. I hadn't seen anyone for an hour, so why I worried now I don't know. Finally I tried to get up but the whole surface of the rock was like ice. There was no way possible to get up. So there I was sprawled out like a toady splat, when I began kicking and spinning (as much as possible) my body around trying to work myself over to the ground. Thank goodness, and I do mean THANK GOODNESS for my hiking pole. My right foot finally made it onto the leaf-littered soil, which gave me friction to nudge closer off the rock, til I was finally able to use my pole and my right leg to hoist myself up.
I scraped my arm but that was it. The worst part was that today I was wearing my brand new hiking shorts, the exact replacement of the ones I ripped the ass out of while creating a new shortcut about 35 feet down the side of the mountain over on the east side last summer. (Those shorts were creatively repaired by my wonderful friend, but ripped to shreads during a later fall-and-scoot activity.) I'm glad to say my shorts are fine.
Now that I was wearing the "Look at me I FELL" dirty butt, I contiued proudly, but slowly, on my way. We crossed the creek 3 times and it was kind of fun walking through the shallow parts. Even Eddie, who is pretty fastidious about the grooming of his feet, didn't seem to mind.
We came out on the tadpole right at the snapper pool, which meant a long hike, a long ascending hike, a long ascending hike in the full sun after I was already tired. When we got to the top of the next-to-the-last hill I cut over to the east to go the rest of the way on mostly shaded trails. I knew it would be longer, but the shade was more important. So I turned into the area by the turtle egg nest from last year and then immediately left onto the little trail where I found the duck-foot rock.
Pic from last summer. The nest was so large, and up about 30 yds from a pond, that I know it had to be an aquatic species
After I first saw this by the trail last summer I couldn't stop thinking about it, so one day I picked it up. It's rather yellow, and really does resemble Donald Duck's foot
We meandered a while, sat in the shade and shared half a ham sandwich and some grapes, then finally made it to the descent. During the descent I met a biker walking his bike up an impassable rocky hill, and it was the same older guy I saw over on the west side a few weeks ago! I'm very impressed.
The hike was 2 hrs 15 minutes, and we stopped and Eddie drank 5 times. This was the first hike ever that he used his entire bottle of water.
Pics I didn't get because I didn't have my camera, and I'm glad I didn't because it would have hit the rock during my toady splat episode:
> a great shot of a pipevine swallowtail
> a huge nightcrawler trying to get across the dry dusty path, and yes I helped it
This was its destiny had I not intervened
> the first actual blackberry heads
> an old man on a bike
> not one, but two ring-necked snakes
A holding ring-necked snake from the cousin hike 9-29-07
After the hike I took 600mg ibuprofen because the fall nearly did me in, then I still had to hike out. I stopped at my mom's, reclined and napped during a ball game (Cards won 9-8, and the Squares were actually AT Busch Stadium) and when I was recuperated we got carry-out Chinese.
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