Missed the road but found a treasure!

We got up at 5:30 this morning when Maui decide to bark at the deer grazing right outside of the RV. We played our daily best 2 out of 3 gin rummy game. I won, so was able to choose the itinerary for the day. The first order of business - to plein air paint during that golden hour of sunrise on the shore of Legion Lake. The colors changed quickly, so what I started with for brightness and shades changed dramatically as the sun rose in the sky.  

Since we were right next to Legion Lake Lodge, we stopped in for breakfast after stowing my painting materials in the pickup. There we met a couple, who we later learned were named Steve and Lynn. They were newly retired corn farmers, now leasing their 2500 acre farm rather than farming it themselves. Steve, a taller thin man, had leathery tanned skin, deep wrinkles around his eyes that crinkled when he smiled, and sported a nicely trimmed silver mustache that belonged on his upper lip. He wore grey hiking pants with side pockets and a grey green T-shirt with a Denali logo on the front. Lynn had the look of a long time runner. She wore a long sleeved tight fitting blueish- purple cotton/spandex shirt with a zipper at the neck and black slim fit jeans that hugged her sinewy physique.

They were paying for their breakfast as we were waiting for a table (why we had to wait who knows because it was just the waiter, Lynn and Steve, us, and the cook in the large lodge style restaurant) and we struck up a short howdedodee.   The waiter/tour guide/philosopher, who I nicknamed in my mind ‘Millennial Joe’ began explaining to Steve and Lynn, as we eavesdropped, where some great trails were located in the park. He described wonderful trails with water crossings, a short hike in a lush valley, and a steeper trail that gained about 1,100 feet in elevation in a 6 mile loop. Millennial Joe obviously assumed they were the hiker types by their looks, and recommended a few gentler trails for us. 

The cook took our order because Millennial Joe ignored us and greeted another couple walking in. He reminded me of someone you would see in Portland Oregon, with a well- trimmed full beard and hair that stuck up like just mown brown grass. His buffalo shaped sienna namebadge said Jason but I like Millennial Joe better. As if he forgot that important Wait to be seated sign, he turned back to us and pointed to a table by the window and resumed talking to the new arrivals as if they were old friends. Besides a short comment later,when he brought us our coffee, that he had seen me painting out the front window, he ignored us. Of course I was wearing my ugly green painting paints, spotted with several versions of previous paintings, and my old woman painting smock. We didn’t want to travel back to camp to change, so I didn’t wonder that Millennial Joe might be thinking we weren’t the usual hikers and outdoorsy folk he usually serves. 

The first hike we took today was with the dogs. and one I was looking forward to just because of who the trail was named for. We headed up Grace Coolidge Trail towards Center Lake.   The trail is named after Calvin Coolidge’s wife, who graduated from the University of Vermont in1902 with a Bachelor of Arts in teaching and joined the Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech in Massachusetts, teaching deaf children to read lips rather than signing. It was a five mile hike, with several water crossings along the way. About 3/4 of a mile in, I could hear Dana Fleming, an avid hiker, scold me in my mind,"You committed the cardinal sin of hiking- you wore a fairly new pair of hiking boots and didn’t bring along moleskin."  

Sure enough, I could feel the burning sensation on the back of my right heel, knowing that a blister would soon follow, and we were only a little over a mile in on the trail. Apparently wearing my new Ahnu boots around the house for a few days was not the true test. So we turned around, probably a good thing for our sheltie Paige, who refused to do one of the water crossings that she had trouble with on the way in where she sank to where only her head was above water - so Gary had to carry her across the 10" side plank to the other side. By the time we got back to the trailhead, my heel popped out a huge blister. We drove back to the RV, where Gary doctored up my heel with perfectly placed thick moleskin, with a circle cut out above the raised blister. We changed into shorts and I put on a better pair of socks and my old trusted pair of hiking shoes and we set off again.

We thought we might drive up to the trailhead that Millennial Joe described to Lynn and Steve, but somehow missed Road 434 to the right. Instead we kept on driving and found a treasure instead! You might remember the movie National Treasure where Nicolas Cage, or perhaps his friend Justin Bartha - I can’t remember exactly who - stuck his hand into a crevice in the rocks and opened up the national treasure trove they had been searching for. Where we hiked was the filming location for that scene. Unbelievable beauty. Probably the most scenic views we have had so far on the trip. 

Some fellow hikers looked at us and commented, "Going skiing?" as we walked along the trail using our new hiking poles, which do look like ski poles. Our friends Kathy and Tom, who we hiked with the weekend before we left, insisted we had to get good pairs of collapsible hiking poles before we left. Trusty Amazon Prime with two day free shipping had them arrive at our doorstep with plenty of time to spare before we left. 

I am amazed at how much they help us on steep rocky inclines and slippery declines on trails. We hiked the two mile loop around Sylvan Lake and then, close to one trailhead, I sat down on a wooden bench near the water so Gary could take pictures of a lone Canadian goose, swimming towards us, who decided we might have food or he was just interested in saying hello. 

I was so engrossed with this beautiful bird at my feet that I didn’t hear the footsteps approaching me until the person was standing right beside the bench. 

"I thought I recognized the hat," Lynn said to Gary. 

She proceeded to tell us how she and Steve had headed out to do the strenuous hike, the one that Milennial Joe had recommended, after we saw them at the restaurant. They had hiked about a half mile in, going up some steep terrain, when Steve got sidetracked by looking up at a handkerchief tied to a tree, fell forward and took a nasty tumble. Lynn said Steve was in horrible pain, with his knee swelling almost immediately. She had to prop him up with his arm around her shoulder and hobble back to the trailhead. She explained that they stopped so he could use a bathroom, and while she was situating him in the back seat with an ice pack, she saw Gary along the shoreline. Lynn had given Steve one  of her hydrocodone stash, that she had left from her 2012 knee surgery. She explained that she kept them for those times when she overworks herself in the garden or after a particularly tough long distance run. Steve had asked her if he needed to worry about her being addicted and she told him, "For heavens sake, this is the same bottle I had for surgery six years ago - I hardly think I’m an addict.

Now she said, he is glad he didn’t make her flush them down the toilet.  For some ungodly reason, Gary and I both turned into Amsway salespeople- telling her about the most wonderful invention on the planet, collapsible walking sticks.

As we walked back to the pickup, we were a bit smug. But alas, pride cometh before the fall. On the way back to the RV, I suggested we take just one more short hike by Stockade Lake. I was picturing it to be like the last one around Sylvan Lake, with a few ups and downs but mostly pretty level. This mile-long trail about kicked my butt. It said a 500 foot elevation change, but halfway up the mountain Gary and I both decided to bushwhack it back to the pickup.  It is a lot tougher going downhill with no trail than it is going uphill. But so glad we had our hiking poles!😊

When we arrived back at the RV, we were both exhausted and I walked to the back of the RV to take off my shoes and socks to survey my sore heel, when something zipped over my foot and ran past Gary sitting on the couch to the front corner of the RV, under Gary’s driver’s side captains chair. Somehow we are making friends with critters today, as a chipmunk is now somewhere in our RV! Or maybe it is our squirrel and he did stow away, and left his green and white shirted cousin at home!