The kids and I were camping with Mird and her kids at their cabin near Standish Michigan with a bunch of other extended family members of Mirds' in-laws. It is a Labor Day tradition for her and I was just substituting for Mark who was drinking beer in Germany and also touring farms mind you! (another story another day). Anyhow, Mird's brother-in-law was sleeping innocently and happily in his bed as were ALL of the children. We are smart. We know when opportunity is knocking and that morning it definitely knocked- on the door of our running shoes' closet-- urging them to head out on the trails! So we decided to sneak out at the butt crack of dawn and go for a quick run. Harmless enough right!?
The plan was to return before anyone else woke up. We didn't even leave a note as to our whereabouts because we planned to be gone about a half an hour. It was roughly 6:40 so the plan seemed reasonable. And it was in fact reasonable, until we got lost. We spent a little over an hour wandering aimlessly through the great forested area that surrounds her family's cabin. We were definitely off-roading it on this adventure! We stumbled upon a camper and were sure we would finally get directions, or at least learn where we were, but nobody was in the camper. It was all locked up! We also found a barn-like, house or garage and again no people associated with it. Things were not looking up at this point in the run and Mird was getting nervous because there was a family wedding at noon; if we were truly lost and a search party was sent to find us, that would really mess up the nuptials. As we pondered our situation and jogged along in hopes of finding some landmark, house or path that would somehow direct us, we became more and more concerned about the wedding and our ability to survive in the woods unassisted. But our shoes ran on!
Alas, we continued on in search of assistance navigating home. A short time later, we stumbled upon a house and more importantly a guy smoking a cigarette on the porch of that house. Generally I would try to educate someone about the many dangers of smoking, but given our situation, we decided to forego health class and get directions instead. After a short conversation with the smoker dude, we learned that we were about 3 miles from the cabin. In order to avoid a repeat on our adventure, we stuck to the roads from that point on. I am somewhat ashamed to admit this, but we actually flagged down a car and hitched a ride home. This is the first time I have ever done this in all of my running years. It was all in the name of responsibility, love and motherhood! If there is one thing more important in this world than running, it is family and we really wanted to get home to them so they didn't worry needlessly, or send out a search party and ruin the wedding. We arrived home just as everyone was awakening and snacking with Uncle Glen so truly it was all okay!
BUSTED
Post sneaky run mug shot!
The Traveling Shoes!
This is what we learned:
but we were definitely lost!
Ironically this very sign hangs in the bedroom that I slept in all weekend long!
Standish MI September 7, 2015! It doesn't count for a state, or a race, but it definitely counts as an adventure of the running variety with my sister and that is more important than any race in the whole entire world! We owned the woods!
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