Oh the afternoon it was and was not. . . . .

So, I am currently reading Through Painted Deserts by Donald Miller. I am up to the point where they get to the Grand Canyon and are about to hike through it. It sparked my need to get out of the house and so I decided to go down to Castlewood park and hike around for the afternoon.

So, I got in the car and headed toward Castlewood; Now there has been a lot of construction going on around me lately because of the new best buy, Petco, Wal mart shopping prison and they just opened up the new road to get to best buy. Since I wasn't in any rush I decided to stop by best buy to check out the new store and see if Joe Perry was working. I walked in the store and saw all the cool electronics's, laughed at what they called their "apple" section and then proceeded back to the instrument section. I walked in and was impressed by how it was laid out a ton. The drum is completely closed off from the rest of the section as well as an amp "test" room where you can crank it up, and there is also another closed off room with acoustic guitars. Joe didn't happen to be there but I did run into Kent Hughes and we talked for a little while while checking out the acoustic guitar selection. All in all I was fairly impressed with the gear selection at best buy, the guys who were working did inform me that they didn't have all of the gear in yet so it should get better. They didn't have a lot of tube amps out yet. mostly just modeling amps, yuck.

I then restarted my journey down to Castlewood to hike around. When I got down to Castlewood I drove about half way in parked the car and just started walking toward the Meramac river. I hiked around in the woods by the river just enjoying what God had created there and also wondering why there were old concrete structures in the middle of the park. Question's came to my head while looking at these structures like, what were they originally used for, why had they been abandoned.

After wandering around the woods I decided to head down to the river and watch the water flow. As I approached the river the ground began to get softer I didn't really care because I was still making progress toward the edge of the water. I stopped my progress close enough that I could squat down and feel how cold the water was. As I stood back up and looked around I decided to head up stream and see if I could walk on the "beach" around the bend without getting stuck or falling in the water, well both kinda happened. Just not the way I thought they were going to.

When I was about 100 yards from the bend I was aiming for the shore began to get very soft and I saw a few spots where someone before me had stepped and created a hole that was about 8-10 inches deep. I tried to avoid doing the same and was successfull for all of about two minutes. Then it happened I was trying to move faster thinking that I had a better shot of not sinking y foot into the ground. That didn't really work to well, about ten seconds after into this attempt my right foot sunk into the ground with a nice "slurp" sound. As I tried to pull my foot out my shoe actually came off inside the hole that I had created. It was at this point that my left foot also sunk down about three inches and then decided to hold long enough for me to reach back and pull out my shoe. As my shoe came out of the whole with the same slurp sound my other foot decide to sink down til I couldn't see it either. I threw the first show up the shore as far as I could and started working on getting my other foot unstuck.

Once I had both feet out of their respctive holes I looked down at my self and saw how muddy I was. I walked up the to the forest where my shoe was waiting for me and decided to take off both shoes and socks. As I looked up the river I saw where Kiefer Creek meets the Meramac and decided that I would follow the tree line toward that point and get as cleaned up as I could. I stepped into the water and was washing my feet and lower legs off with the cold water, and it was kinda fun. It felt like I was 13 again and in the boy scout's wandering through the woods, it was really nice. At that point I made up my mind that I was going to wander through the woods til it was to dark to see, or at least close enough to dark.

I finished washing off my shoes and put them back on wet. With my socks in my back pocket I headed up the creek to wander through the forest some more. It was about this time that I pulled out my cell phone and updated my facebook status through twitter. I thought that I had sent, "Steve fell into the mud while hiking. Check the blog later for the full story." More on that later. . . . . .I headed up the trail a little bit and then decided that I wouldn't get on a trail for the rest of my "adventure." I tramped through the forest back toward the river where I could safely walk up to the water. I was walking the shore and stumbled upon an outrigger from a sailboat, I think. I then looked across the river and saw that there were many items that aren't normally found on the shore of a river. Lawn chairs, plastic toys, and other out door items were strewn across the oppisite shore. I wondered if they had been caught there during the last flood and hadn't been cleaned up yet.

I headed back into the woods and stayed off the trail trampling over fallen tree's and shrubbery. I so enjoyed making my own trail and viewing things that I wouldn't have seen if I had stayed on the trail. I wandered through the forest for a while longer and then headed back to the car. At the car I threw my shoes in the back and drove home barefooted.

When I arrived at home I flipped open my computer to let it grab email and jumped in the shower to wash off the woods and the mud from the afternoon. After a nice, hot relaxing shower I sat down at my computer and began to look at my email. After reading through my email I checked my facebook and found that seventeen people had commented on my status because instead of texting "hiking" I had instead sent "hicking" which started a string of comments because Randall took that to be hickey in the plural form and off people went from there.

So that was my afternoon, no there was no outdoor make out session, though it would have been nice. And I do not have a hickey from the vacum cleaner, Brian. If you would like to view the madness that went on check out my facebook page and click on the status that has all of the comments with it. Let me end this post with, "I hate my phone, want an iPhone and can't wait for thanksgiving so that hopefully my hours will go up and I can afford things again." And yes I would have left my iPhone would have stayed in the car. . . . . . . .