Sick as a dog on the Dosewallips

The road ends here

I woke up at 5am with a headache and could not fall back to sleep until after I got up (about 6am) and took some aspirin.  Then I had to get up again at 7:30 to get my little one off to school.  After getting the little one off to school I then had to decide if I should hike. I felt too ill to hike, (fever, headache, lightheaded and with the runs) but I could not pass up the opportunity to get out, so I went anyway. Even though I did not have a migraine and actually have some sort of cold or flu, I stopped in Hoodsport and bought some migraine medicine.  That medicine, some positive thoughts and a cup of coffee enabled to me to hike in spite of being ill.

I reached the “trailhead” at about 11:00 and made it to the ranger station by 1:00. I felt good hiking, but the second I sat down for lunch I felt terrible. It’s interesting how moving makes me feel better when I’m ill. I took a short lunch because I was worried about being so ill 5.5 miles into the “backcountry” all alone, on a weekday. I was also nervous at my lunch stop because I discovered that my first aid kit was not in my backpack and my personal becon was not working so had I left it in my car.  All those things together could have added up to disaster, but they did not.

My lunch spot with the Dosewallips trailhead sign in the back right

I headed back for the car at about 1: 20 and finished my hot lunch-time tea as I walked. I walked slowly and carefully on the way back so I would not injure myself with my nervousness. My perception was certainly a bit altered today because I was ill. I saw quite a few things that I had never noticed before, such as electric insulators on a tree and a huge dip in the paved road on the way to the trail head.

I met a local on the trail when I was about about a mile from my car, he had a Cajun accent and he said that he has invented a perpetual motion machine and once he gets a shed built he will start working on making his machine. He had an interesting dog with one blue eye and another eye that was half blue and half brown.  The local said that he sees a certain kind of wild life at the campground all the time.  I won't say what the wildlife is becasue I don't want hunters to be able to google on it.


Speaking of wildlife, I saw a giant heron lift up out of the riverbed when I was hiking in.

I got back to my car at about 45 minutes before sunset.

I drove home very carefully, immediately pulling over to let all tailgaters go by, I was too ill to cope with being dazzled by headlights and I know the drive home is statistically the most dangerous part of any hike. I had to stop and put some water (from constance creek)  in my car at Triton Cove because two lights on my dash were blinking. While I was putting the water in, I noticed that the overflow tank says my car needs some kind of special coolant. I never noticed that before, I guess I should find out what that is about and quit topping my car up with water.

I ran up a nice calorie deficit today and now I’m going to go to bed early. I wonder how I will feel in the morning after ignoring my body and hiking in spite of being ill?

My bad ankle did not flop over at all today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

11 miles 1,100 feet elevation gain

It's the next morning and I feel pretty good, in fact I am less ill than I was yesterday.  But I am sore from my hike.

other times I have blogged this hike

Jan 09, 2011
Jan 29, 2010
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Wednesday, December 27, 2006


11 miles with
1,100 feet elevation gain

This campground is getting wilder by the week

The road is giving way here because a tree on the bank just fell

Mossy Rock

Insulators that I never noticed before

Contance Lake TH... maybe someday..

Constace Creek

This is the road!

Ten MPH sign is getting funnier all the time

Pay to hike up a motorcycle rut in a clear cut? No way!

Tell the DNR where to stick their user fees:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/greentahuyaplan  it's one of the last questions on the survey.

Two hour bike ride around town

My knee hurts for about a week after I am done hiking and then it feels better.  I wanted to get some exercise this weekend but I did not want to make my knee flare up again so I decided to go for a bike ride instead of hiking.  I have pilates tomorrow so I did not want over do it either.  I ended biking about 13 miles around town, I gained about 200 feet in elevation plus some ups and downs and I my average moving speed was 6.8 MPH.

I feel good after my bike ride.  My thighs are pleasantly tired and I got a nice mental break from my house and my kids.   My knee feels a lot better than it feels when I have hiked the same distance.  Maybe, if I spend the next two weeks biking, (and doing pilates and yoga)  instead of hiking my knee will get better.

A nice thing about biking is that I did not have burn any gas to get the the starting point, since the starting point was my driveway, but I got to go a lot further and see a lot more than I would have seen if I had started a hike from my driveway.   Also biking is a more intense workout, so I get the same amount of exercise in less time.  That means my house is less trashed when I get home and I have more time in the day to do other things.  The worst thing about biking is having to breath in auto exhaust and the risk of crashing.   It was a bicycle crash that weakened my ankle to the point that I had to go to physical therapy.

Even though I was surrounded by people and cars, I felt like I got more solitude than I get when I hike on a busy trail.  I don't have to interact much with the people around me when I am biking where I seem to have to interact a lot with the folks I pass when I am hiking.  One risk when biking is that people will yell nasty things out their car windows, I've had this happen a lot in the past, but luckily it does not happen to me as much now that I am older and apparently less attractive to bullies and living in a less urban area.

I can take some solace in the fact that even if I can't hike, I can still bike.  Biking is easier on my knees and there is no chance of my hurting my ankle, unless I crash.

13 miles
200 feet elevation gain

Big Creek

I went up Big Creek today. I wanted to take it a bit easy again because I have to do Pilates in class tomorrow. Today my ankle did not flop over at all! But my knee hurts. I wish I knew what was wrong with my knee. I don’t think its bad enough for a doctor to diagnose, so I’ll keep plodding along until it either gets better or gets bad enough to require medical attention. I’m really feeling my age this year, no doubt about it, I’m not going to live forever…

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches,
and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.
-John Muir

I got off to a late start so I could let my husband sleep in a bit. I hit the trail at about noon. My average moving speed going uphill was 2.3 MPH. My average moving speed for the entire hike was 2.6 MPH. I took it real slow hiking back down so I could protect my ankle. The strategy worked. My ankle did not flop over at all. I ate my lunch at the overlook as usual and I headed back down the trail at 2pm. I did spent about ten minutes trying to meditate and relax before I hiked back. One of the classes I am taking this quarter requires me to meditate for 20 minutes a day.

Lunch Time

There were more people on the trail than I would have liked, but that’s the price for hiking a popular trail on the weekends. One of the other hikers on the trail really did not like dogs and my dog felt the same way about him. My dog was on leash when we met up with that hiker. That hiker was hating on dogs because he had a bad experience several off leash dogs earlier in the day. The hiker was glad that Patches was on a leash, but he was still hating on dogs and Patches could tell, so she barked at him. It is not normal for Patches to bark at other hikers, in fact this might have been the first time she has ever barked at another hiker. I don’t remember her ever barking at other hikers before.

I did not let Patches her off leash for much of this hike, due to the amount of other people on the trail. When I did let her off leash, I made her walk behind me. I did not know that Patches had been trained to heel off leash! But she did it so well today, that I am certain someone trained her to do it in the past. She was five years old when I got her and I don’t know much of her history.

The only snow on the trail was on this old logging grade

The trail was mostly free of snow all the way to the lookout but some hikers that had gone higher said there was a lot of snow near the lower Ellinor trailhead. I really wanted to hike up there and take a look, but I forced myself to turn around at the overlook due to having to do Pilates tomorrow.

I ate two poptarts for breakfast 400 calories, and comsumed about 800 calories worth of terra chips and one cup of tea with milk and sugar, on the hike.  I hope I lost some weight today.

7 miles
1,700 feet elevation gain
Average Moving Speed 2.6 MPH

Mystery Mushrooms, I also saw winter chanterelles today

Track log and Elevation Profile

This used to be my water source.  Something must have changed up stream,
It should have been running good today with all the recent snow melt and rain.

Geocaching adventure gone slightly wrong

This was to be a short hike with a lot of driving in the National Forest.

 We were going for a geocache near Spider Lake but we got the Tundra stuck in the snow instead. Some locals gave us a ride out of the woods. Once we got back to my house we headed back out to Spider lake in the fading light with a convoy of both my Jeep Apache and Jeep wrangler with a winch.

The plan was to hook the wrangler to the stuck truck with a tow strap and if need be hook my Jeep to the wrangler via the winch. The Wranger is light and we were unsure if it could tow a Tundra through two feet of snow. Hooking the winch to my heavy Jeep Apache would have solved the weight problem. But we did not need to use the winch after all. Still, it was good to have a second vehicle out there in case the wrangler got stuck, we did not want to take any risks, since we had a 15 month old baby with us!

We were able to tow the truck out of the snow and then we bid farewell to the Jeep Wrangler and the baby, while we went after the cache in the dark.  We got first to find!

truck is free and now we are ready get that first to find

Waterfall at night.  It was too dark to see this without the camera flash

Frisbee'r goes for the cache while I stay low to gaurd my ankle

Just another day in paradise!

About one mile RT with about 300 feet elevation gain.
My ankle was fine in spite of the snow and in spite of my lack of trekking poles.