This morning I went to church and got ashes on my forehead before I went to work. I knew my students would be full of questions. Sure enough, one of my students thought I had cigarette ashes on my head. Another student thought they were the ashes of a dead person. Maybe I should have just waited and gone to church tonight.
The weather is so nice here! Finally above 40! I took advantage of my day off on Monday and went hiking at this beautiful place called Apple River Canyon State Park. It was so peaceful, and I was glad to be there alone, even though everyone yelled at me later about it. At first I was afraid it wasn't going to work out. When I got there I realized I hadn't taken into account the foot of snow that was on the ground. So I couldn't even see where the trail was supposed to start. This made me a little nervous since I was going to be hiking on bluffs above a river. But I managed to find a trail with a set of footprints and followed those. Everything was going well until I came to a spot where the footprints seemed to stop and there were just crazy animal footprints everywhere. So I went the way the made sense to me- back towards my car. I'd already been hiking for a while, and I figured the trail should loop back around. Unfortunately, I found myself at the bottom of the canyon. I was hoping maybe there would be a bridge or something- I was sooo close to my car! It was just across the river, up the hill, and down the street. I really didn't want to go back the way I came. I'd been hiking for over an hour and my jeans and sneakers were all wet. So I forded the river. I pretended like I was a pioneer on the Oregon Trail. Luckily, the river wasn't that deep, and I found part of it that was still icy with a tree branch over it, so that helped.
Anyway- good times! I definitely want to go back during the summer. It was worth the two hour drive.
The weather is so nice here! Finally above 40! I took advantage of my day off on Monday and went hiking at this beautiful place called Apple River Canyon State Park. It was so peaceful, and I was glad to be there alone, even though everyone yelled at me later about it. At first I was afraid it wasn't going to work out. When I got there I realized I hadn't taken into account the foot of snow that was on the ground. So I couldn't even see where the trail was supposed to start. This made me a little nervous since I was going to be hiking on bluffs above a river. But I managed to find a trail with a set of footprints and followed those. Everything was going well until I came to a spot where the footprints seemed to stop and there were just crazy animal footprints everywhere. So I went the way the made sense to me- back towards my car. I'd already been hiking for a while, and I figured the trail should loop back around. Unfortunately, I found myself at the bottom of the canyon. I was hoping maybe there would be a bridge or something- I was sooo close to my car! It was just across the river, up the hill, and down the street. I really didn't want to go back the way I came. I'd been hiking for over an hour and my jeans and sneakers were all wet. So I forded the river. I pretended like I was a pioneer on the Oregon Trail. Luckily, the river wasn't that deep, and I found part of it that was still icy with a tree branch over it, so that helped.
Anyway- good times! I definitely want to go back during the summer. It was worth the two hour drive.
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