I improvise on a hike and have a difficult week

To say that my week hasn't been a happy one would be a bit of an understatement.

I've had a lot of life's little inconveniences (but necessities) get in my way of enjoying things over the last week.  While none of them were big,  life altering events,  I've had enough of the small things annoy me that I just wanted to feel sorry for myself,  throw my hands up, and give up.

....and yes, these things too, shall pass...

As much as I'd love to share my frustrations from a "therapy" standpoint,  some of it is just too personal to share here so I will just leave it at that.

Early in the week I did do a hike at Devil's Lake. My plan was to hike the 2.8 mile Johnson Moraine Trail, but at some point I misjudged where I was on trail (Note: ALWAYS take your map- even if you think you know a trail well) and I ended up hiking portions of 2 other trails as well as a service road on my way back ( in order to avoid a hill without much of a view).

In retrospect,  I should have chosen an easy, super short trail for the day because I was already dealing with some soreness issues in my body.

....but like the stubborn, Dutch lady I am, I chose to ignore what my body was telling me and do the hike I wanted anyway.

The trail had a lot of long hills as well as one or two steeper climbs. The photo above shows the start of the first long hill.

Now, I will have you know-- I took several beautiful photos of this hike (some of the prettiest I've had yet), but stupid me-- I uploaded the photos onto my blog and then went back to erase them out of gallery.

This is something I normally do after I write a blog post to keep from using up the space on my phone. Unfortunately,  as I have learned the hard way, you must actually post the writing to your blog so they will save permanently before deleting them out of your gallery or you will loose them.

I did not do this.

**sigh**

so I was left with only the reject photos I was not actually going to post.

Lesson learned.

....so I apologize for not having "prettier" pictures to post.

I'm still getting the hang of this blogging thing on my phone .....and.....at least for me, there IS a learning curve.   

This is the first trail intersection after that long hill. As you can see, the trail is marked and there is a map at (some of) the trail intersections, but you can't rely on that because some of the maps are faded and not all have your position marked well (leaving it open to guesswork).

This trail crosses over HWY DL and this section was on the other side. I took this photo right before I encountered one of the steepest hills that made my arthritic ankle cry in pain.

Hills can be challenging when you are feeling good-- but when you are already sore, they can pretty much ruin a hike.

The views were pretty though...

If only I could have shared those pictures... (sad face).

Meet Little bunny Foo-foo!!

I saw this little guy and about 20 of his cousins during my hike.

There are a LOT of rabbits out right now.

....and that is about all I have to share of this hike. I did this hike last Tuesday and haven't hiked since.

I spent the Wednesday evening after a bit sore & sick and went to bed early..

On Thursday,  it stormed in the evening, but I managed a groom session with Griffin. I would have liked to have done a walk with him, but the weather and my still being a little sore didn't allow that to happen.

I'm starting to come out of the ache-y-ness finally, so perhaps I can get a hike in sometime between seeing the horses and fireworks yet this weekend.

I hope everyone has a nice 4th of July holiday!