Adventures Of The Infirm 06/21/19

Robert H. Treman State Park, Ithaca, New York

If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened; but God has surely listened and heard my voice in prayer. Praise be to God, who has not rejected my prayer or withheld His love from me! ~ Psalm 66:18-20

Blaine insisted on hiking today. He was feeling pretty good and so was I. We were anxious to get on a trail and were disappointed when we discovered that the Gorge Trail here in the Park was still closed today. Not surprising since it rained a lot again last night.

There are several trails here, but we knew we wouldn’t get to all of them. However, we were hoping to do a round trip, 4 ½ mile loop of the Rim and Gorge Trail. When the Gorge was closed, we resigned ourselves to an up and back on the Rim.

Someone went to a lot of trouble to make these signs.
They were posted at the designated spots all along the way
with the little man positioned over where you were. : )

Does this count as a pre-existing medical condition?

We could hear the roaring water most of the way along the Rim, wishing we could see more of it! But it was still a wonderful hike, and despite Blaine’s struggles, he did pretty well, actually. And for once, he didn’t have to wait on me! I had lots of energy and ambition with no physical encumbrances. I felt like a little kid wanting to race ahead and having to wait on my parents! 😊

Views of the campground waterfall area from the trail.

There’s still standing water along the way.

This is a Red Newt.
Are you impressed I know that?? : )

This is the most difficult type of terrain for Blaine –
a downhill incline.

It’s a good thing we had a big breakfast this morning (scrambled eggs and toasted Texas Roadhouse rolls, as suggested by our server!), since we left home with only two bottles of water and two handfuls of trail mix. We knew how long the hike was, but we forgot we had to hike slower – 4 ½ miles in about 4 ½ hours! Well below our normal. Of course, we also have to include all the many stops we made to stand and gawk at the awesomeness!

We saw this nice little waterfall from the trail, so I went down to take a closer look.
Poor Blaine stayed up on the trail . . . : (

He took this one a bit further up the trail.

And then I came along and took a close-up.

And awesome it was! Especially since along the way on the Rim, we noticed people now walking on the Gorge. We could hardly wait to get over there!

When we came to a large waterfall near the halfway point of the entire trip, there wasn’t a great view from the Rim Trail – which now had us down close beside the river, so I decided to go down a few steps to the bank and see if there was a better vantage point. It was an easy walk, anyone (who didn’t have bad knees) would have gone. I was just over a couple of small rocks and broken shale and I was being careful – honest! – when I stepped on a slanted rock I thought was dry.

I’m always telling myself to trust my boots. They have wonderful grip in places where you would question it, so once again, I told myself to trust my boots.

And then my boots started sliding and down I went.

That in itself wasn’t the problem. It was a short drop from my already bent knees to the upward-slanting rock I was on. The problem was, on the way down I smashed my left side into the slanted rock beside the one I was on. It was very painful, but after I gave Blaine a ‘thumbs up’ so he wouldn’t worry about me (or yell at me about whether my phone in my back pocket was okay 😊), I stood and gingerly walked a few steps. The fall wasn’t worth it. There was no better picture.

The picture I took after I fell.
The picture Blaine took from the trail.

Back up on the trail, Blaine checked out my boo boo and deemed me fit for travel. Red and scraped, but no mass quantities of blood. And the only damage to my shirt was some dirt. Whew! Later, after we returned home, Blaine noticed a couple of scratches and a slight bruise under my left forearm, plus I sustained a temporary sore spot on the heel of my left hand, along with a tiny scratch.

I took an Aleve right away to try to stave off the inevitable aches and pains, but I spent the rest of our hike analyzing my body – at first, every breath hurt causing me to shallow breath (did I crack a rib or two?), but eventually that got better. And I wondered if I’d bruised a kidney, but that seems fine. However, I felt what appeared to be deep muscle pain in my side/back with each and every step around the area I’d injured (even with the Aleve) and I wondered how I would fair until we returned home. I never breathed a word of these concerns to Blaine. He had enough to worry about with his own body. He didn’t need to worry about me too. All I’ll say is, it’s a good thing Blaine had his own speed issues because I was no longer feeling like moving faster than a crawl either.

I will have to say, this was easily one my favorite hikes of all time! Despite our infirmities. Simply stunning! But I have to wonder if I would feel the same had it not rained for several days.