Slip Sliding Away

The traveling sock went back-country camping this weekend.

You should know that my traveling sock sees a lot less than the Yarn Harlot's traveling sock. Hers goes with her on long flights all over the world and gets to meet lots of fellow knitters at book signing events, etc.

Mine typically only goes with me from the house to the office and back as I sit for 1/8th of my day in traffic every day. I rarely let my traveling socks out of the car until they are done and replaced with a new traveling sock (for the record, I'm on my 4th pair and I only learned to knit a few years ago - yes - traffic seriously sux where I live). Still, it made sense to take it with me this time since it's small, and 100% stockinette stitch, so I wouldn't need to carry a pattern in my pack.

The other advantage to taking the traveling sock is that the fiber is a superwash-very important when there is the risk of hiking in a downpour, as we did this weekend.

The first day was nice. Just crisp enough to keep us cool, without being so cold that we were uncomfortable. No rain fell on us, as we had just missed it. However, since it has been falling persistently for several weeks now, the ground was completely drenched. As we slogged up what was supposed to be our trail, but more closely resembled a creek bed, I remember thinking "Boy, I'm sure glad we're hiking a loop so we don't have to come back this way!" At that point, the rain gods threw back their heads, and sat down to plot tomorrows weather while laughing maliciously at their evil machinations.

The rains had not only soaked the grounds, but they had swollen the river (in West Virginia they call it a Otter Creek, but let me assure you...no where, NO WHERE in Texas would this thing ever be called a creek) we were supposed to ford across. It was too high and too fast for us to make it across, so we ended up retracing our steps and returning to a camp site we had passed earlier, with the cold hard reality of having to retrace our entire route on the hike back to our cars come morning.

But for now, why focus on that, right? Instead I focused on my wine - which, I have to tell you, was pretty darn tasty. And considering I was drinking from a piece of very old tupperware, that's really saying something.

I've failed to mention that I went on this trip with Washington Women Outdoors (WWO), and they had pitched it as "Gourmet Backpacking". And they didn't disappoint. For dinner, we had burritos with beans, rice, cilantro, cumin, avocado and grilled onions, garlic and peppers. For dessert we had baked apples stuffed with oatmeal, cinnamon and raisins. For breakfast, we had crepes filled with banana, nutella and peanut butter. No kidding, it was really great food. Our trip leader was a super-hero with powers that enabled her to start fires from wet wood. I admit to being amazed, not just with that, but with how good everything tasted.

About midnight, the rain began to fall. And fall. And fall. It's really saying something when breakfast tastes good even when you're eating it in the rain. We struck camp around 8AM and hit the trail. There's only so much wet-weather gear and gore-tex boots can protect against, and mine failed around 2/3 of the way in, but we made some seriously good time. Nothing like a torrential downpour to hasten your steps. For those of you reading this and thinking "it wasn't raining that hard..." - Hey! It's my blog, and my story.

Rain or not, it was a pretty hike, with good people and good food and I'm sure after I can feel all my extremities, I'll be ready to hit the trail again.