Not lost in the woods

someone should tell this story, so that it's documented, and future generation (i.e., grandkids) hear the TRUE version of it and not some weird distorted version of the truth.

it was a nice Thursday morning, when 4.25 people and one yellow dog decided to go for a nice, low-key, preferably on comfortable trails, hike. the plan was, as you can imagine, not to go for too long, too high, or too far off the 4x4 trails.

Gary grabbed his GPS - just in case - and we hit the road. we walked on Grenary Lake Rd to a 4x4 trail that leads to a notable beaver pond. since it was lunchtime, we sat on a rock overlooking the pond and ate our sandwiches. the view was quite spectacular: the trees were colorful, the pond was quiet (well, it WAS, until Grady jumped in to retrieve something or other), and across from it we could see a small mountain. Sandy said to herself (out loud) "wouldn't it be nice if we could find the way up to the top of that hill and look at this pond from up there?" we all agreed that it indeed would be nice. (remember this piece of the story for later, it's important).
after being thoroughly sprayed on my Grady, we kept walking on the trail.

as you can see in the satellite image, the area is spattered with rocky hill-tops. the trail took us by one of those, and we decided to spread around in the forest and play the funny game "hide and seek", also known as "Ron, Ron, where are you, Ron". after Gary's throat was coarse, we continued onto a branch of our original trail, which took us all the way to its dead-end at a bear trap (don't worry, there were no bears there), where the 4x4 trail ended, and a narrow deer(?) path continued downhill to the next pond. that too was a beaver pond. another great spot for an afternoon snack.
from now on, we continue trail-free.

Gary decided to rely on his incredible sense of location, and not to use his GPS device. I would agree that these devices are helpful to some people, but you really don't need them when Gary is around!
from the second beaver pond, (which, according to Gary's sense of location, is pretty close to Lake Lauzon) we continued in the woods going uphill, in a direction that will take us back towards the cabin: just keep the sun to your left.

not long later, we hit another one of those rocky hills, from which we could see the next one, and the next one, and before we knew it, we got to our destination: the rock overlooking the beaver pond by which we had lunch!


(if you click on the map it will take you to google, and there you can zoom in or out, see the terrain, and so on. the purple line is drown very approximately, as i couldn't see the trail through the woods. the rest is self-explanatory)

the next image shows Gary and me sitting on the top of the rocky hill admiring the view, and the other one is the view, where you can see the beaver pond and the rock on which we had lunch.


from there it was easy: now that we know where we're at (umm.. i mean, we always knew where we were, but.. umm... now we arrived to where we planned to get the whole time), we climbed carefully down the hill, and used the dam to crossed the pond, got back on the trail, and walked back to the cabin.
what a wonderful, well-planned trip that was!


beaver house in the beaver pond, as seen from the beaver dam

p.s. - ron, you have more pictures, right?