Ely's Peak (attempt one)

Over the weekend we were kid free and I had this idea that because Matt likes nature, I would suck it up and go on a hike. I figured it would count as out exercise, I'll say I've been in nature, I'll have planned something really cool and fun for us, all of this. I have had MANY friends hike to Ely's Peak and say it is a super great hike, perfect for beginners. 

I am a beginner. 

So I find the instructions online. I inform him of our plans. (Disclaimer: this is where I'm going to insert the "Matt should have known better" statement because when a cognitively impaired person tells you they know EXACTLY where they are going but often can't remember where they live, you should do your own research and not listen to them.) 

We find the parking area easily. We get out, and ta-da! There is the wooden boardwalk!

It's a lovely boardwalk. We take it until it stops and notice that hey- there is a kind of steep hill to climb and we see stairs. OBVIOUSLY stairs mean we're in the right spot. 

We start walking and walking and ta-da! We came across the DWP tunnel, and it is at that point that I feel 100% confident we are going the right way. I didn't realize the tunnel was so long and that it would be so dark. It looks like the perfect place to dump a body because I'm not sure anyone would see it and I bet an animal would get to it before a person saw it. I'm just saying. 

We decide to go through the tunnel because of course, we see no other direction to go. There are no other trails. Just like I thought, it was DARK AS HELL. 

We get through the tunnel and we see a couple of maybe trails. There is one to our right that looks like sudden death. Another one that looks like death once you go further down. The ONLY trail that looks like the logical choice is this one. 

It looks like the OBVIOUS choice, right? Nowhere at this point did we see a map. We see people coming back down this. In our first two miles (yeah, you read that right) we saw people coming the opposite direction so we thought we were going the right way. 

Also around mile 1.75 we come across a woman with two dogs. She's alone, and asks us if we know where we are. We say of course not and she says well, she's going to just follow us. 

Oh good, bank your survival on us and that might not go well, consider we had been arguing over if this was right for the last twenty minutes. So she follows us until mile 2.6, which is when Matt and I called it. Our map thingie on our phone show we are going into the middle of nowhere. The information I had read said there would be blue markers and eventually a sign, none of which we saw and I just felt like if we hadn't see them yet it wasn't going to happen. 

So we tell the nice lady with the dogs that we were turning around and going home. She looked kind of bummed we weren't continuing on but honestly, I'm not sure where the hell she was going. 

I mean, we did see nature and periodically there were nice views so I guess it wasn't a complete bust? I will say though, it was HOT. We had water (thank god I remembered that) but I felt like I was going to pass out the last mile. I was pretty damn irritated though. When we got back to the tunnel we were looking around and saw an older couple trying to figure out where the hell to go too, so I didn't feel so stupid. 

This was us at the end. I was dripping wet in all of the wrong places, in definite need of food, my ankles and feet were so swollen, same with my fingers. My knees were also swollen and I hadn't really experienced that yet so that was fun. By the time we got back to the car we had walked 5.14 miles, which is more than double that we do on a nightly walk and those have me throbbing. The day after this little jaunt? My hips felt like they were falling apart. Have you seen that movie COCO? Where the skeleton guy just randomly falls apart? That's what I felt like. Like, I'm sorry, let me just pick up my femur, I seem to have dropped it. 

We got home and I showered, changed my clothes, took some medicine, drank my weight in water, ate a bunch of snacky things and stared at the wall while sitting on the couch. It took us almost two hours to decide if we were going to eat dinner and if so, what we were going to eat. 

After dinner though we did go to one of those ice cream shops that roll your ice cream. He saw it on Facebook a few nights before so I said that's what we'll do for his birthday weekend. 

I got a chocolate brownie, and it was OK. It wasn't anything amazing and it had a bit of an odd taste to it? 

His was definitely prettier, he got a strawberry mango. He said he wanted strawberry on top but got boba, which isn't what he wanted but whatever. We didn't eat in the shop because those tables and chairs hadn't been washed in a long time so we ate outside in the car and people watched. We can say we tried it but I'm not sure if we'd go back. 

We ARE going to try Ely's Peak again though. I refuse to be defeated.