We interrupt your normal blogcasting to inform you that I, and my travel companion, nearly died in the woods last night.  I’ll explain.

To the left, is the map of the main trails in Hixon Forest, which surrounds the beautiful bluffs and Mississippi River in the city of La Crosse, Wisconsin.  The map is color coded.  The green trail=easy, yellow=medium, and red=hard.  My boyfriend is pointing out the nice yellow trail that follows along the river.  The record must state that I said I wanted a bluffside view.  So, we took the squiggly red line.

The squiggly red line was called the TNT Trail, and apparently, its for mountain bikers.  We hiked it on foot.

If you ignore the foolish expression of fun on my face, you are wise.  I however was not so wise.  Our journey began safely enough.  You can see the trail initially was clear, wide, and for the most part, smooth.

Oh, and that canteen in my hand, it’s full of red wine.  Because if you’re going to start hiking up a cliff in the middle of the woods at 7:30 at night, you may as well get a little tipsy doing it.

     The further along we got, the trail started to incline much more.  Fueled by our love and a nice cabernet, we continued hiking.

We even found a cool looking cave thing!

And I climbed part of it!  See, still smiling!  Hiking is so much fun!

Now we get to the turning point in our adventure.  You see, we reached the end of the TNT trail.  We made it to the top.  Unfortunately folks, this was a bum climax to our hike.  The trail end took us to the city limits, we pretty much ended up in a cul de sac.  And, no lookout point from the bluffs, we were in a field surrounded by trees.  At this point, I I started kicking stuff and screaming “Where’s my rewarding view?  I wanted a cliffside view!  All I can see is someone’s driveway!  What a rip!”  So, the currently optimistic boyfriend, and I, started our trek back down the trail.  The thing about trails is there’s usually a couple places where you have to choose which trail to stick with.  We could go back the way we came.  Or we could try an adventure and take a different trail!  You’ll notice in the photograph, the trail is becoming much less easy to identify.

We climbed up something that looked like this.

And we got a view that looked like this!

And this!

And this!

It's amazing there's proof of us smiling at all on this trip.

I don’t know if you can tell by how dark the photos are becoming, but the sun was setting.  And the record must state that my boyfriend didn’t want to climb up this cliff.  I was the one who thought we had plenty of time, and wanted to see the city from the top of the bluff.  A bluff, I should define for those who are unfamiliar, is basically a small mountain.  On our journey back down another new trail, we came across several hitches.

Are trails supposed to look like this?  Hmm, guess the city hasn’t cleared them all since the rain and the flooding and paths being washed out and all.  *shrug*

This is where the photography stops, team.  From here on out, survival became more important.  At one point, my boyfriend said, “It’s a good thing you brought your purse.  Now if we get all 127 hours out here, I can cut your arm off for you.”  I was not amused.

The trail we were on got REALLY steep.  To the point where I was crab walking down the side of it, trying to add a little extra traction.  My boyfriend actually fell down the hill and into a tree, scraping his leg badly.  It was growing darker and darker.

I really thought we were ok.  A little sore, needed to move faster, sure, but I thought we were ok.  Then, the trail just stopped.  One minute we were on a dirt path, the next it turns into some kind of raveen covered in broken logs and limbs and leaves.  And this was all about the same time the sun vanished!

Things were said.  Things that came from my boyfriend that sounded a lot like, “I’m not happy.”  And “I don’t like this.”

I hoped he would be the leader.  Nope.  I’d pushed him beyond his limits.  It became very clear that I was going to have to figure a way out.  With no idea where the car was from where we were, and since we had no flashlight and it was really dark, the plan became to head toward what little light showed through the trees on a far side and get to the highway where we could follow the road back to our car.  However, that route led us to a giant rock wall.

The second route we took led to my boyfriend falling for the second time.  Only it wasn’t a slide fall, it was a climbing over a tree trunk, grabbing onto a tree branch, and having it snap beneath you so you face plant into the ground covered in debris.  When his breath returned, and I finished apologizing, we tried another route.

Finally, after a half hour of deep, meaningful prayer, my boyfriend said, “Is that our car?”

I started clapping and running towards it.  We didn’t talk on the drive home.  We didn’t talk when I started up a warm shower and got the Neosporin out.  We didn’t talk while my boyfriend got a shot glass and a large bottle of gin from the kitchen.

But hey, we’re alive!  And I did get us out eventually!  Here’s hoping he’ll laugh about it tomorrow.

What’s the most exciting thing that happened to you this weekend?