Skye asked me if I wanted her to show me the creek her and her friend Philip found a few weeks ago.
The creek looked pretty muddy and murky, even though there was evidence that it's a fishing hole....
After seeing it, I realized that we have been down to this creek before a couple of times several years ago. We haven't ever been able cross it and explore farther because there appears to be no crossing to the other side other than wading through the creek.
Skye inherited her exploratory nature from me, so all that had to happen was for one of us to suggest crossing the creek. If Toby had been with us this would never had happened. He would have warned us of what bacteria that may be lurking in the water or lecture us on all the reasons we (he) should NOT cross. Today, the "boss" was not with us, so together we made the decision to cross the creek.
With me and Skye both game, we decided the best way to cross would be to take our shoes off and walk across on a shallow portion of the creek downstream. As Skye was taking off her shoes, I decided to take my chances and try and cross the creek on my bike. I didn't get far before I plunged feet first into the water and ended up having to walk my bike across after all.
Once we made it across it was some nice shady trail.....
We also came across a small snaky looking pond....
....and had to cross another portion of the creek that I didn't get a pic of.
Putting her shoes back on after we were confident we had crossed all the creeks...
We were really in our element and having a good time exploring but, it was at this point in the pic below that we heard a loud vehicle engine coming through the woods. Mind you, we were about a mile into the woods so we couldn't see any civilization at all so the sound of an engine coming down the makeshift road made me a tad nervous. All I could envision was a Jeepers Creepers scenario where we get stalked, raped and murdered in the woods.
What I really wanted to do was to jump headfirst into the brush and hide from the truck, but I didn't want to appear crazy because I had watched too many scary 80's flicks back in the day.
As the truck rounded the corner there were two Redneck men in it dragging behind them a canoe full of fish. They seemed nice enough and did a hat tilt to us, asked us if we had seen any rattlers and drove on by. I wasted no time high tailing it on down the path, just in case these guys got any bright ideas of coming back for the two helpless ladies in the middle of the woods.
Soon we came upon another pond. I knew where we were at at this point, because we had been to this pond before. It was a bit disturbing that we found a shovel leaned against a tree with a machete on the ground next to it. Now my imagination was really beginning to run wild. Even though Skye was not initially worried about the Redneck men, me being nervous about them rubbed off on her, so she picked up the machete and put it in her back pack...you know, just in case...
It's at this point things took a turn for the worse. The path seemed to bend back around to where the Redneck men possibly were, so we decided to try and venture back the way we used to come. The old walking trail was all grown up, but we felt confident that we could make our way out through the thick brush.
We had both made the executive decision it would be better to be bitten by a rattler, than raped and murdered by Rednecks.
This would be the last picture I took, because my mind had gone from exploring mode to self-preservation mode...
We fought our way through thick brush and mesquite trees until it got so thick we began to loose our bearings, and since we were traveling down the hill we lost track of the rooftops from the neighborhood too.
It was pretty scary out there. Every time we stopped to access our position, the bugs and flying insects took us as a food source. This sent Skye over the edge because she has a phobia of wasps and flying insects.
We were only getting deeper into the brush and thorny Mesquite, so we decided we would have to turn back and chance the Redneck men. We did have the machete this time though.
Luckily, we spotted another trail, that I suspected would take us back to the neighborhood. As the other trails did, it came to a dead end at the brush and mesquites which was getting very frustrating. It seems the trails were made by trucks that led to the fishing ponds, and we accessed there was only one way in and one way out.
Finally, we got so close to the rooftops that we just said "fuck it" and trudged on through massive bluebonnet patches and crossed our fingers that we didn't get snake bit, since the rattlers love to hang out in the bluebonnets.
We had to laugh about it later. We both wanted an adventure and adventure is what we got! Next time we will go out there better equipped and on foot instead of the bikes, and definitely a weapon or two.
I would have been paranoid too! What an adventure!
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