Into the Mild

Just prior to celebrating the National Indians Losing their Land to Us Thursday, I loaded up the family (well 75% of the family, La Jefa, The Little Man, and myself, no Midasdog) to head over to Bankhead National Forest. I have some pics of our eventual 'hike' in the woods, but first a quick detail of the day:

Awake at 6:00AM

Shower, eat breakfast, tinker around until 7:00AM

Load car with 1 Chariot, 2 bikes, 2 bags of adult clothing and 5 bags of miscellaneous food, drinks, sippy cups, diapers, toys, baby wipes, camera stuff, etc.
This takes until 10:00AM

We leave for the forest. We make one stop in Wren, AL at the only place to stop in Wren, AL. Everyone we see, men, ladies and especially the children is adorned in camouflage. Ah-oh. Do they allow hunting in Bankhead? Yeah what else ya gonna do in the woods? This makes us a little uneasy. But we forge ahead and get to where we are going to begin our adventure. It is now 12:30PM.

We decide to just hike a little with the Little Man. We 'hike' until 1:15PM; turn around and head back and arrive back at the trail head around 2:00PM. We traveled approximately 1/2 mile. Pretty good with a 2 yr old. Mind you he was hiking on his own, not in the marsupial fashion that most toddlers and infants are used to.

We then drove to a different trail head in the forest and began another sort of hike. The only difference is this trail head required a $3.00 fee. We really didn't get our monies worth so the forest will owe us next time. We finished up around 3:00PM and headed for home.

Back Home at 5:00PM and unloaded by 6:00PM.

For those of you tabulating, that's:

~3 hrs loading, packing/unloading

~4.5 hrs driving

~2 hrs 'hiking' read: walking, stopping, falling down (the Little Man, not us), taking pics

We didn't hook The Chariot to the Niner and ride old abandoned forest roads like we had planned, but we spent the whole day together as a family and that's what we intended to do. Maybe we will be better prepared for adventure next time, actually map out a route and ride, maybe we won't, but we will enjoy the day just the same.


Hey! what are you doing way up there?


The Little Man.....kickin it up the trail.


Uh-oh.



Can I take this home?


There maybe more hiking, walking, driving or activities other than riding in my immediate future. I have had back problems for some time now but for the last nine months my left leg has been alternating between pain and numbness. I have been seeing a chiropractor for a while and am now beyond his help. I saw a rude, know it all, I don't have time for your problems, orthopedic surgeon both this summer whose course of treatment I chose not to pursue unless absolutely necessary. I am now seeing a non-surgical orthopedic and have gotten a MRI. I will get the results today. Hopefully there is a solution that will allow me to continue to ride and begin to heal at the same time.