County Hiking Challenge Number 3

Mama and I took our third county hiking challenge. Mama and I tried something new. One of Mama's friends is really into essential oils and aromatherapy and she gave us some drops that are supposed to help PTSD and stuff. Mama put a little on a bandanna and I wore it for the hike.  

 Rockin' my bandanna

We saw some bikes right away and I sat right down and watched them pass without any anxiety at all.  Mama was very happy.

We saw lots of horses on this hike. I remembered that they weren't scary and that I was supposed to sit down and quietly watch them pass and again, Mama was very happy. In total we saw 10 horses and I was perfect for all but one. That one smelled weird, kind of like a bike. I jumped around and huffed at it. Mama said that there was a definite smell of gun oil on that horse and she though either the rider was carrying a gun (illegal on the trails) or he had cleaned his tack or coated the horse's hooves with gun oil, which would have been a weird thing to do.

There were lots of other people out at this preserve because it was such a nice day. Most were walking or fishing or boating on the lake, but one group seemed to be planning to stay.

We've never seen quite such an elaborate setup for a group of 6 people

When we were halfway around the assigned hike Mama wanted to take a side trail, I pretended like I was going to do it with her, but then just circled around the attaching trail and back to the main one. Mama said I could have just said no and not pretended like that.  When we were almost at the end of the trail I told Mama I wanted to take the trail over the bridge, so we did. We walked that trail for awhile and saw a new trail Mama had never tried before. It was labeled "Green Trail" and was mowed grass so we started up it. A short distance along it it came to a T. There were no signs marking which way we were supposed to go so I chose left. It was the wrong way. Left ended up taking us on a twisty trail to the shelters where people were having birthday parties. We walked around the shelters and eventually got back to the main trail and followed it back to the bridge. We did find the exit of the Green Trail about a 1/4 mile before the bridge. Mama says maybe we'll go back another time and turn right this time.

As we hiked I saw more bikes, and some didn't bother me while others did, but even with the ones that did I didn't remain paranoid afterwards and only Mama kept checking behind us for more bikes. Right at the end though we got passed from behind without any warning by three bikes, one of which was really scary because it had two people on it and three wheels. I lost it then and then became paranoid for the rest of the hike because I didn't know such monstrous bikes existed. At the next bench we got to I wanted to take a sit down oand gather my thoughts before we finished the hike.

Is that awful bike going to come back?

Mama noticed our shadow and took a picture.

Miles Hiked: 4.6

Bikes Seen: 20.5