Miles 35 through 40, Canoeing

On tap for today, a canoe trip down the Conewango Creek.  Yes, officially, it is a creek, but it has all the appearance and behavior of a river.  I measured the distance when it was all said and done, and it is about 9 miles.  In my canoe I had Ed, my dear husband.  We also had my daughter and nephew in a 2nd canoe, and in a 3rd canoe, we had my brother-in-law Dan, and his wife and little boy and puppy.  My brother-in-law Billy was in his almost-new kayak, a pretty slick little boat.
 

 

This used to be a railroad bridge.

 

Dan and the fam. 

I took this video to get this Great Blue Heron who was our forward scout for most of the trip.  I hope you can see him a little bit.  

Canadian geese

 Approaching Warren.

So, we canoed into Warren 9 miles.  We landed at Beaty School.  Then, because there were not enough seats in the pick-up vehicles, I volunteered to just start walking home rather than twiddle my thumbs waiting for a returning vehicle.  But, alas, we were 2 seats short in the pick-up vehicle!  My darling husband volunteered to walk with me.

He and I began at Beaty School, walked along the Beaty Playground, crossed the Fifth Street Bridge, and then turned north to head towards the HikeBike Trail that I had walked on last week.  By the time we met up with our family, we had made it to WalMart, a distance of 3 miles.  Amazing, huh?  We had just canoed 9 miles and then walked another 3.  The best part of the day was getting to do all of that with my hubby.  Thanks, honey!

Total steps today: 14,026

Canoed: 9 miles

Mile 42 through 46, 957 to Egypt Hollow

This morning I went to the gym with my Mom!!! I was so happy that she was with me! I joined Curves because of her glowing reports on their program. She has done very well with her progress, and I am happy to share in that success with her. She has more to celebrate, though, than I do. She is only 3 weeks out from having a total knee replacement, and I had been encouraging her to make her move back to Curves sometime before I headed back to Texas, and today was the day. She had called her doctor and cleared it with them under the understanding that she would listen to her body and only do what felt comfortable to do. She did fantastic! After the gym, she and I went grocery shopping and then came home.

  I stayed home for several hours, relaxing off and on and working on food preparations. In the evening, I decided....Now or Never Time! I need to take a walk. I wanted it to be an extra long walk since I didn't walk much yesterday. It wasn't as much as I probably should have done, but it was 5.2 miles (I rounded it down to 5 for the purpose of my 80 mile goal.) I decided to walk from my house to my in-laws'. According to my navigation app, it is indeed 5.2 miles. 

I need to start remembering to visit the potty each day before I walk. I am having wayyyy too many confrontations with nature calling and have done 5 zillion reps of Kegels. Just sayin'. Sorry if TMI 

 There's not much to see as I go down Route 957, just more beautiful countryside! I crossed Route 62 and found myself at Pine Grove Cemetery. That is where my grandparents are resting, Grandpa and Grandma Ferry. I wasn't sure where their marker was, so I called my Dad, and he told me where to look. Thank goodness, I found it. I stayed there for a few minutes paying my respects and cleaning off the marker, and then I headed back to the road. 

I can't even imagine how old this tree must be.  I put my water bottle there for perspective.  It's huge.

I stopped to pick some blackberries that were growing alongside the road.

Good ole' Larimer Park.  It's always been a nice playground.

The Russell post office.

This bridge crosses the Conewango which is the creek we canoed the other day.

This is a nasty blind curve on the way to Ed's parents.

The beginning of Egypt Hollow.

Can you tell I love scenes of forested streams?  Love them!

Ed used to walk to this farm to get milk for his family.

After getting to my brother-in-law's house and having discussions about walking and hiking, he lent me this book.  Tomorrow my sister-in-law will be hitting one of these trails.

 Total steps today: 17,506<-------Good job!

Miles 40 Through 41 (July 4th post)

Click the line below to watch the Fourth of July Parade Slideshow:
Fourth of July Parade Slideshow 


Maybe it just comes with the territory of it being a holiday, but my steps were kinda pathetic today.  I only walked a total of 8,865.  I went to the parade with my family this morning, and the only real walking I did was 6/10 of a mile from where I parked at my brother-in-law's apartment to where the parade was.  That's why I'm only counting 1 mile of walking today.  My end result was more than a mile, but that was incidental walking which I prefer not to count in my 80 mile goal.

So above I include a slideshow of the pictures and videos I took of the parade for those who are interested. 

Total Steps Today:  8,865

Mile 29 through 34, Egypt Hollow

I walked extra again today because I couldn't walk yesterday.  What everyone found out today is that I had a surprise up my sleeve; my husband came up to visit the family, too, and his family had not known he was coming.  It was a monumental surprise!  So, I had a good reason to not be walking; I had to go pick up my husband at the airport.

I decided that today, instead of walking double, I would walk today's steps plus half of yesterday's.  Tomorrow I will do the same thing.  In other words, I walked 6 miles today, and tomorrow I will also walk 6 miles.  Wow.

I started today by going to the Curves Gym, the real impetus for all of this walking that I'm undertaking.  I'm starting to work out on those machines and looking at my arms and legs and barely recognizing them as belonging to me.  Those little calves are mine?  That kind of thing.  What a great feeling.

After working out at the gym, we went and surprised my husband's parents, visited his brother and family and then went out to lunch.  Right after lunch, we headed back to his parents' house, and then I headed out for my walk immediately.  Again, knowing myself, I knew that if I went in to sit or visit at all first, the likelihood of my getting out to walk 6 miles as I had planned would be vastly diminished.

Earlier today, my husband had driven me to determine the location of 3 miles out from his parents' house.  Once again, up a very long hill, Egypt Hollow Road.  The route was, for the most part, entirely uphill.  I walked to the end of the 3 mile mark and then walked back.  My goal was to do that in 90 minutes.  I ended up missing that goal by about 10 minutes, but I was pretty pleased regardless.

This creek runs along most of this road.  

 

This road is just plain going UP.  It's really hard to tell in the picture, but it's just brutal.  People seeing me out walking must have through I was nuts.

A view from climbing to the top.

I saw a doe in the woods, and when she saw me, she ran into the woods, but then she stopped.  She just stood there, and it was long enough for me to get a picture.  See her standing right in the middle of the picture?

The last part of my walk was very rewarding.  Here I am at the end of 6 miles, and I decided to run!  Not just little piddly jogging but all-out running!  (I was really trying to make it back to the house inside of 90 minutes.)  I'm just so overjoyed that I could do that.  Because of my history of knee and feet problems, it was really incredible to be running.

I have some new challenges I have to consider for tomorrow.  One, I have a blister or something on the back of my right ankle, and two, I've decided that I need to buy new sneakers, so that'll be on my plate for tomorrow perhaps.  Plus, tomorrow we have a canoe trip planned, so I haven't figured out where or when I'll be getting my walk done.

Total steps today: 16,473

No walk today, but cool discovery!

Well, I didn't get to walk today.  I ended up in the car all day.  Long story; tell ya later.

And I didn't have my pedometer, either.  Bummer. 

But imagine my surprise when I came home, picked up my pedometer and discovered that *I* had walked over 10,000 steps after all!  Wow, and without even wearing it or getting out of the car! 

Ha, ha!  It's because the pedometer spent the day on the dryer through 3 loads of laundry!  TeeHee!!!

I'll be making up my steps, don't worry.

Mile 21 through 28, Thompson/West/Miller

I learned several new things today.

• Going down a really incredibly long and steep hill is much more fun on a bike than walking.
• When I tell the world I'm going to walk double today, God takes me seriously and then makes sure it happens.
• Stay away from the mud that has flies all over it because it's not really mud. 
• I can't take a picture of some special places in my childhood because I'd rather remember them the way they were than how they are now.

After a late start, I did indeed walk double today.  I didn't walk yesterday because the weather was not cooperating at all.  I decided to walk up to my grandfather's farm on Miller Hill.  I expected to run into my Dad up there, would visit and rest for a bit, and then walk back.  My planned route was Thompson Hill to West Rd. to Miller Hill.  It's probably a good thing I didn't remember too well what those roads were like because, oh my goodness.....Wicked.  Hills.  Today.   In this picture, I am pointing at a pretty long stretch of road on Thompson Hill that goes straight up.  See, around here, when a road has the word "Hill" in it, it really is a hill!  (Unlike where I live!)

I ran into more animals today.  Only one dog spooked me a little bit, but others were cute.  Here are some goats placed out into a yard as alternatives for mowing the lawn and a chicken.

 One special thing about this road is that my sister used to live off it.  I hadn't been back here in so long I had forgotten about the steep hills, and I had forgotten when I would come across where she had lived.  For a while I thought I would miss the location for lack of not being sure where it was, but then I looked to my left and saw a familiar shed/garage and realized that's where it had been.  My sister and her husband had lived there in a trailer right behind that garage until they moved to Houston in 1998.

Really soon after that, it was already time for me to turn right onto West Rd.  I didn't remember this road being so close to where my sister had lived!  In this picture, I have just turned onto West Rd.  Fortunately, this road is all pretty flat.

My next intersection was at Rhine Run.  To the left as I walked, it was very nice view.  I must have ridden past here many times if I rode my bike to my Grandma's, but I didn't appreciate then how gorgeous my surroundings were. 

It didn't take me long after that to get to Miller Hill Rd. which is paved and has more traffic.  There is the farm that had been my grandparents' farm since 1959.  The first picture here is of the house, and the other picture is of the view across the road from the farm.

And here is where I see yet again that God has a sense of humor and that He is 100% behind my efforts in walking and getting fit.  I got to the farm and nobody was there!  What could have happened is that I showed up at the farm, would have been offered a ride back home, and maybe would have accepted.  Yeah, probably would have accepted.  And I would have rationalized and said I could make up the steps later.  But the fact is, nobody was there, and I had the time....so I just turned around and started back!  I felt like Forrest Gump when he was walking and got to the end of the pier at the ocean and simply turned around and went back from whence he came!

I decided to take a different route.  I went back to West Rd. and turned right, but when I got to Rhine Run, I took that left.  I would be walking by one of my favorite places from my childhood, Penn Highlands Campground.  I could not take a picture of it; see bullets above.  'Nuff said.  What a shame. 

Have I ever mentioned I could be very good at running a campground in my retirement?

I began to descend the hill that would come out on Route 957, and I reminisced about the countless times I had traveled that route to swimming at Penn Highlands.  I remember one time that I had ridden my bike so hard to get up there that when I arrived and jumped into the water, my nose started bleeding.  It was hard work getting up that hill!  But today in this walk, I am going down.  When you go down on a bike, you have to get up on your bike like a jockey, hunch over and hang on for dear life.  What a rush!  Walking down is not nearly so exhilarating.

Next I came upon a camp which I hadn't thought of when I envisioned my route.  I guess I had forgotten about it.  When I saw it, though, I remembered it immediately.  Shafer's camp.  We had had many youth retreats there with church.  Fun times.  

Here's the last pretty view from high on Rhine Run before it got to the bottom.  I remember going with my Dad to these fields to trek into the woods to go squirrel hunting when I was little.

And so, thus as of today I have completed 28 miles of walking since last Monday!  Whew!

Total steps today: 18,111

No blogging today

But will walk double tomorrow!


Total steps today: 6,036