Went for a hike with Dad this morning.
A brisk jaunt up the gorge to try out Dad’s new boots. Not as cold as last week and we even saw some wild flowers.
About half way up the hill we came across this sign which read: “Hikers should be aware that there are ticks, poison oak and rattlesnakes.”
Good thing we’re here in spring, Dad said. Come summer and there’d be all sorts of snakes basking on the open rocks. And we made our way to the top of the hill.
The view was gorgeous.
On the top, Dad spotted an old logging trail that he knew would take us around and loop into an old part of the trail -right back to the sign actually. So off we went into the brush. It was really pretty in that part. Lots of little clearings under bigger stands of trees and green moss on rocks. We lost the trail a few times and cut down hillsides. A bit of an adventure.
Dad all the while pointed out 50 year old skid trails, trees crooked from years of wind, oh, and these here that we’ve been grabbing all the way down the hill? These are poison oak branches. And yes, you can get it in the winter. So we chatted about different ways to wash it off -bleach is good apparently. I get it pretty easily so I was freaking out a bit. Making mental notes not to rub my nose. Eventually we found the trail again and made our way back to the truck.
Ah the warmth of the truck. What shall we have for lunch? That wasn’t so bad, we should do that more often. The new boots worked great. Is that a tick? Yeah, that looks like a tick. And another one! Don’t flick it on the floor of the truck, throw them out the window! Ah! Pull over! Ah!
They weren’t very big but there were quite a few of them. When we got back home, we broke into a flurry of pealing off jackets and taking shower and vacumming the truck. But I did get bitten. Twice. (heeby jeeby) Takes a few days for the Lyme disease to kick in though. So I’ll have plenty of time to call everyone to say goodbye.
Didn’t get a picture of the ticks, but I’m sure there are some in this picture if you look close enough. At this point we were still blissfully unaware:
At least we didn’t see any snakes.
