Day 32: LOST!!

Today's long run was Kendra's to plan, so naturally we ran in her "neck of the woods" - seriously.  We went from Kendra's parents' home to a place known as Blymire Hollow and then around some of the wooded area nearby.

Well, right away I should have known that this run could be interesting...

We decided to take this "flat loop" and, after about 1/4 of a mile, we started making quite the steep ascent!  Kendra said not to worry, that we'd get to turn left onto a road that was halfway up the hill.  Well, we did turn left, but we had run up the WHOLE HILL first!  After the left turn, there was more uphill!  AHH!  At this point, Kendra mentioned that she hadn't been on those roads since she was fishing on a local pond as a little girl - I'm guessing that was probably at least 15 years ago!

We continued on the thinly snow-covered roads and vetoed a road we should have taken, simply because it had not been plowed and had probably about 6 inches of snow cover on the road.  From there came many more hills than expected - gradual hills that didn't seem to end!

By this time we had gone beyond where Kendra had traveled before...

(and now the REAL fun began!)

My philosophy during the phase of the run where we were clueless as to our location:  KEEP TURNING LEFT!!!   There was a road I wanted to turn left onto, but Kendra thought it would lead to more uphills, so we compromised and took the next left (though we later realized the first road would have been a good shortcut... shucks!).  We kinda freaked out on the next road because the house numbers were like 12150 (seriously, what road has house numbers THAT HIGH?!?)... we thought we might be running forever!

Well, we went the correct direction and pretty shortly came across a main road, at which time Kendra had her bearings on our location (though she was totally flabbergasted that we made it to that main road - how in the world did we ever get THERE?!?).  We were able to connect with a small road that ended up being the same road we started on (therefore allowing us to complete our modified loop!)... whew!

We can happily say that we found our way back to my car without asking for directions OR turning around (though retracing our paths was definitely a highly considered back-up option!).

Overall, I'd say it was a good run - just challenging enough (because of the hills and snowy roads), not too much traffic, and GORGEOUS with the snow-covered trees in the woods!  Plus, it was a great adventure for two chicas with a newly found love for adventures!  Our 7 mile run was successfully completed!!

P.S.  I believe we were able to finish the run because we had the promise of delicious cheese pizza at Kendra's parents' home when we made it back (provided we survived the run!).  A huge THANK YOU to Kendra's family!

Check out our running video from today (sorry for the poor image quality)...