Wednesday I lost my mind. I had what I thought was a brilliant idea. I would take my toddler on a hike. By myself. I picked out a trail that was listed as easy. In the interest of full disclosure I should tell you that I actually picked out two hikes and thought that we might be able to do both. Go ahead and laugh. It was a moment of pure stupidity on my part.
We drove to Sunrise, killed a rabbit (I hit him with my car. Felt bad.), got to the entrance and realized I didn’t have our pass, paid 15 bucks even though we have a year pass….. you get the picture. The drive was great but there were many, many signs that I was supposed to just turn around and go home.
We get to the Sunrise visitors center and I realize AG has dumped apple juice in her lap. She has created the perfect stain that appears just like her diaper leaked. I don’t have a change of clothes for her. She has 5 or 6 temper tantrums in the parking lot and I’m getting all the "bad mom" stares over my psycho, wet-butted daughter.
We speak to a cute ranger (cute, but not really bright). He gives me instructions to the trail head and we’re off. 47 tantrums later we reach the trail and head in the exact direction given by the ranger. By my calculations we should be 45 minutes and 18 tantrums from Shadow Lake.
We (read: I) loved all the flowers in the meadow. The scenery was great.
Mount Rainier from Sunrise
Anna Grace griping down the trail
Here’s where the scenery gets ugly. See that bright green/blue lake in the middle of the photo? Well that’s Shadow Lake….the lake I’m supposed to be taking a nice, quiet and easy hike to with my well behaved and oh-so-cooperative daughter. Ya see, my cute little ranger guy was directionally impaired and told me to go left at the fork when I shoulda gone right. So now I’m out here in the wilderness, walking along some ledge like meadow thing…. WITH A TWO-YEAR-OLD!!!!!!…. and I’m going in the wrong direction. We turned around. I would say that WE hiked back but that would be a lie. I hiked back while carrying a 35 pound toddler. (Just shoot me!). Did we head to Shadow Lake? Nope! We went straight to the car, started that thing up and drove straight to the house with above mentioned toddler screaming all the way.
Ain’t life grand?!
you are so brave to go hiking with a two year old, but the getting lost *argh!* Glad everything worked out alright in the end.
Yeah, but then you got to knit Wednesday, so the day wasn’t a total loss, right?
John always thinks we’re going to be able to “do” things when the four grandchildren under the age of 4 come visit. He hasn’t figured out yet that it takes all day just to get everybody ready to leave the house, then it’s time for a nap/diaper change/meal/meltdown for somebody, and we start all over.
Can I come next time? Great read…I really cracked up. “Wet-butted”.
OMG! I have so much respect for you for even attempting this wonderful feat. There is a great beach here in Maryland where you can find sharks teeth that wash out of the cliffs nearby. It’s a two mile hike through the woods. Didn’t seem like that much to me the last time I did it a few years back, but once I read those words “two mile” I decided that it would need to wait a year (or two) before I take my son – and he’s 4! I can just hear the requests to carry now – no way! You are a brave, brave woman!