George and Steve - Hell Hike

There's not much more fun to be had in the fall in Texas than traipsing through the woods. The water is too cold for swimming and neither of us are much good at sitting still to fish when it's cold. So we decided to go to the State Park.  We had gone there the weekend before and went on a short 3 mile hike and explored a small part of the woods. Since that went incredibly well and only got us a tiny bit lost we decided to do it again on a larger scale. We were practically experts after all. We survived the 3 miles.

We got to the park at around 10 am or so. We paid our entrance fee and got a map. I will never forget the woman in the park office who was showing us some of the trails on these awesome maps. She pointed at the newest trail exclaiming it was new and wonderful but extremely long. She had this light in her eye as she said it, like it was a dare or something. She mentioned there was a lake at the halfway point of this hike. We discussed making a day of it someday and attempting that hike. We had no intention of taking that trail on this day though. We just wanted to explore a bit. Our plan was to take the shorter one that ran sort of parallel to the extremely long one. If only it had worked out that way.

We set off on the trail. We came to this sign and I shudder every time I see it now. We didn't go the wrong way. We were still on the right path at this point. I just wish we had gone to the left rather than the right. We would have saved ourselves about 9 miles if we had.

So off we went. We walked uphill, down hill, through swamps and places that only an alligator or a cousin of the men in Deliverance could love til we came to a very large part of a river.

The map, which clearly left a bit to be desired at this point didn't seem to indicate we were off track so everything seemed okay though we were getting a little concerned.  When we found this big part of the river we decided, because we are experts after all that we were almost at the end of the trail and wisely finished off the only drinks we had with us. We stopped and took pictures and oo'ed and awe'd over the beauty of the woods. We had all the time in the world, we were almost done. We might have even made fun of the old lady at the park office over her warnings of how long the trail was. My theory on this is that she heard us somehow and wiggled her nose to stretch out the trail. WE couldn't possibly have been wrong. Experts!! Hello???

So,We started out again and walked quite away when we came to yet another body of water. I started wondering if maybe we weren't somehow on another trail or something but the crappy map didn't seem to indicate any problem at this point either. It showed our trail very close in areas to the long trail so we still thought we were okay til we walked about another mile and came upon what suspiciously looked like a lake. I'm not going to lie, I almost dialed 911 right then. Instead, I pretended to be brave and said  "Please tell me that's not a lake".  George said "I dunno, it sure looks like a lake". I calmly explained that this was the wrong answer. Despite my hopes and quickly whispered prayer, we got closer and sure enough, there was a sign that said "Lake Isabel". Would you care to guess the name of the lake that serves as the halfway point for the long trail? Ding Ding Ding, you guessed it. Lake Isabel it was.

On one hand we now knew for sure where we were. On the other hand, we were only halfway through the hike and had no supplies. I almost dialed 911 again. The ONLY thing that stopped me was the knowledge that they would send helicopters and tracking dogs and it would be BIG news that my children would NEVER let me live down. I had these visions of emerging from the woods with our rescuers to see my children not happy to see I was alive but rolling on the ground laughing. Needless to say, I stuck it out.

I must admit the lake was quite beautiful and I took some fantastic pictures there, but we would have been a lot happier not to have found it the way we did. Apparently the color markers on the trees kinda SUCK as far as trail markers go and if the park service can't bother to make them easier to see or place signs to tell you where a trail ends, you should just turn around and go the way you came. Trust me when I say you'll like hiking a great deal more if you do this. But if you hike and have such an adventure as we did I hope you see sights like this at least.

As it was, it took us roughly 7 hours to get back to the truck. On the last 4-5 miles of the hike we were exhausted, our feet hurt, we were dying of thirst and we were passed by people on bikes. Who the hell decided not to put water fountains or coke machines in the woods? That's what I want to know. Anyway, George was planning to throw sticks at the people on the bikes and steal their transportation. I talked him out of it. That's the story I'm telling anyway. George would say it was my idea but he's not the one telling the story now is he?

In the end we finally made it out of the woods and no bikers were harmed. I think we were too tired to even attempt to find a stick to throw. That was probably for the best really. We go back to the park often, but now we go with bikes and enough supplies for 10 hikers lol. We really ARE the experts now! In fact, not long after our Hell Hike, we came upon 2 hikers in the same predicament we were in that horrible day. I was kind of pissed off that they didn't seem anywhere near as tired as we were and the woman still managed to look almost glamorous despite the ordeal. It's okay though, later, we came up behind them like ninja's and almost gave the woman a heart attack. That'll teach her to still look decent while being lost in the woods. Poor lady.  BWAHAHAHA I felt really bad about it, for reals.

Stay tuned til next time when "Steve" rides a bike for the first time in over 20 years.

"Steve"