We’re back home and the busy life has consumed us once again. Does that sound melodramatic enough??? Good thing it’s not entirely true! The trip to Mueller State Park was lovely and very refreshing and very tiring!
We had a total of two days at the park. We arrived around noon on Monday (Memorial Day) and left the park just before noon and Wednesday. I spent Monday and Tuesday morning around the campsite unwinding and shooting some film (nothing much to show for it, however). Tuesday afternoon we decided to take a bike ride on one of the trails near the campsite. The trail map suggested that the trail was about 2.7 miles long of moderate difficulty. It turned out that the trail we wanted to take wasn’t open all the way for bicycles and the trail we took was definitely more than "moderate!" As we went along, it continued to go down and down and down hill — all of which we had to go back up. It was impossible to ride back up, so we had to walk the bikes back up. I was absolutely dead tired when we got back to the campsite. I’m definitely not in any shape for that kind of a trek. The next morning we decided to just ride around the campground on the blacktop. I started to mount the bike and the chain broke! Oh dang.
We did drive to another trail which was rated as "easy" and 1.8 miles long. It wasn’t too bad a hike and the views were quite spectacular, but if that was an "easy" trail, then I’m not interested in anything more difficult.
What is it about this time of year when everything gets very busy? Perhaps it’s because winter is over, the days have turned warm, and everyone is suddenly on the go. The traffic on the freeway last Saturday was dramatically worse than it’s been all winter long. People seem to be trying to get everything done all at once. I’m hopeful that this won’t last very long and by the end of August we’re getting back to something much closer to normal. Meanwhile, we’ve got a very busy summer ahead of us that is turning out to be somewhat complicated. Normal, if it ever happens, is really looking good.