So today I had planned to do a simple hike, but it turned into craziness when I got lost and ended up miles & miles away from my car.

(click on each pic to see them in higher resolution and not cropped)

I’m not an outdoors person. Specifically, I hate dirt & being dirty. So I’m sure you’re already asking “Why were you even down at the state park to begin with?” The answer is pretty simple. I’ve been walking on a treadmill six days a week for over a year and it’s become really monotonous. So I figured I’d switch things up and go on a 5.5 mile hike… of course it ended up being A LOT longer.

It took 30 minutes for me to drive from my house to the Pocomoke River State Park. The park is split into two halves with Milburn Landing on the west side of the river and Shad Landing on the East side of the river. I parked near the pavilion at Milburn Landing  and started on the trail pictured above. I quickly realized that the “trail” was more of an access road and very different from more mountain-like hikes I’ve gone on.

Also within minutes of starting my trek I discovered the area surrounding the trail was more marsh/bog-like than woods. As a result the insects were insane! I came prepared with bug spray, but even after drenching myself in it, there was a cloud of bugs attacking me.

Less than a mile down the trail I hit my first spider web and I was pissed. I was yelling, screaming, cussing, and doing an all out freak-out. It’s not that I’m scared of bugs. It’s just that I don’t like feeling dirty. Plus the spider webs were HUGE. The one pictured above was over four feet tall.

My solution to the spider trouble was to walk while swinging a stick in front of me. It kept the webs out of my face, but did nothing about the bugs.

Around three miles the trail split. There was nothing to mark which direction I was supposed to go in. So I went right knowing that it would take me either north or east.

By four miles I was freaking out and lost all patients. I was bleeding from multiple face wounds (giant horseflies) and since the trail was only 5.5 miles long I figured running would get me back to the beginning sooner. So I threw down my stick and started hauling ass.

I ran for almost thirty minutes and was seriously confused when I came to this road. I clearly chose the wrong way when the trail split. But since I didn’t want to deal with the bugs again, I decided to follow the road.

This is me right after I excited the evil bug path. You can see the welts from the bug bites (also notice how freaking exhausted and pissed I am)!

After walking for a bit, I came across a turtle in the middle of the road.

So I helped him to the other side.

Eventually the woods disappeared and I was surrounded by corn fields.

More than an hour later I ended up in downtown Snow Hill (the capital of Worcester County). By this point it was 10:45 am (I had started my hike at 7:30) and my pedometer said I had gone over 13 miles. I called a friend for help, but he was busy with his two kids while his wife was at spin class. So then I called a taxi, but was told it would take over an hour for the taxi to get to me and would cost a flat rate of $45 dollars. I was pretty much screwed.

When I got home, I re-looked at the trail map and marked where I went off course (you’ll have to click & enlarge the picture to see the markings I added). The blue dots are were I went and the yellow path is where I was supposed to go.

I approached a State Trooper leaving the court house (the place my parents got married over 10 years ago). I explained that I was a 20 minute drive from my car and asked if he could give me a ride. He said he couldn’t because it was his day off.

A few minutes later I saw a guy in a DNR truck and told him my story. He said he had a meeting to get to and couldn’t take me all the way to Milburn Landing, however he could take me to Shad Landing and once there I could kayak back to Milburn & my car.

When I got to Shad landing I figured it was time to re-energize. So I ate my lunch. The Cheerios were an emergency snack, not part of my lunch. It also dawned on me, that since starting out, I had drunk over 3 liters of water and hadn’t gone pee. Nor did I need to. So I refiled all my water bottles and tried to re-hydrate.

While eating lunch I watched two dragon flies have sex. It wasn’t romantic.

At 11:38 a.m., I headed down Corkers Creek. It’s a short creek that could take me to the Pocomoke River. Then once on the river, I could head down stream a few miles and back to Milburn Landing.

The trees along the river were Bald Cypress. They are cone bearing trees, but not evergreens. Instead of keeping their needles year round, the needles turn brown and fall off.

One of the weird aspects of the cypress is that the needles are like tea and dye the water. So as a result the water had a very rich chocolate color from the needles. A park ranger, later in the day, told me that “Pocomoke” is an old Indian word meaning “black water.”

It was weird to be on the creek cause the area is an official “swamp” and I’ve never been in a swamp before. It was so neat to see trees growing out of the water like you see in movies and TV shows.

Very early on my creek ride, I saw two snakes hanging from trees and drop into the water (I later found out that the poisonous copper-head snake LOVES to hang on trees and drop into the creek). So I was utterly paranoid every time the creek was covered with low hanging branches.

The heart shaped lilies were on both the creek and river. From what I could tell, they start as underwater yellow followers.

Eventually I hit the Pocomoke River. Unlike the creek, there was a fairly strong current, so I had to paddle much harder. Though I did take a break when I saw a bald eagle and great blue heron. The heron really surprised me because it was less than ten feet away and HUGE, easily the size of a large dog or child.

After paddling to point that my arms felt numb, I discovered I was heading north and almost back to freaking Snow Hill (ok, I didn’t “discover it” a park ranger on the shore saw me and asked what I was doing. He then explained that I needed to head in the opposite direction).

HOURS went by and finally at 2:17, I made my way back to Milburn Landing. I was very very happy!

This is the dock where I literally crawled out of the river.

This is my car that… well is a piece of crap, but holy-crap did I miss it and was happy to be re-united with it!

The first thing I did when I got home was shower. The second thing I did was head to google and try to figure out how far/where I went today. So on the map above, the orange marks my sojourn through the evil bug infested woods. The red is the car ride I got from Snow Hill to Shad Landing and the green is the path I took in the kayak (notice how it backtracks cause I went the wrong way). Then the blue line was simply me using google to see what the road distance was from Milburn Landing to Snow Hill. Google said it was 10 miles so I don’t think my pedometer messed up saying I walked 13.

All in all… it was an exciting day. However, I have more than 50 insect bites and although I’d kayak at Shad Landing again, I in no way whatsoever have any desire to revisit the hiking trail.

The best thing about today is that my motivation to use my treadmill has been restored by like 1,000%.