Our adventure at Wildcat Hollow was not without mishap, note the score in the title racking up in favor of the park vs the hikers. Seems the first part of the trip was the most exciting. But first some set up ...
With two other hikers ensconced in my Forester, we set out east around 6:30 pm from Dayton to Columbus to add Rick to the caravan at the I70 to Rt 13 freeway exit that leads to the park. This was supposed to be a three hour drive, at least according to Google.
Now I want to say that I ran this Google map and posted it on the Meetup site with the warning "Results May Vary". I did not want somebody to come straggling into camp on Friday night all pissed off about my directions. In the Meetup world the event organizer offers up suggestions but the rule is pretty much you are on your own. I even suggested printing directions, knowing that Internet and even GPS can be spotty at best, non-existent the rest of the time. I dutifully printed the maps and directions and we launched.
I won't go into detail since you pretty much already know where this is going. At some point the roads no longer bore any resemblance to the maps, and within seconds we were hopelessly lost. Did I mention we had added a car to the group? Rick from Columbus fell in behind when we got off the freeway on to Route 13.
Don't even get me started on 13. I had to pick Friday the 13th to start this trip. I was not superstitious about this date until now. I am officially a believer. And Route 13 comes into play here shortly ...
We are now cruising the east side of the park hopelessly looking for some right turn that ostensibly would take us right into the campsite. In theory, or whatever. Trust me there is no right turn. What we had was some awesome roads, though. Steep climbs that plunged the car into darkness after you bound over the crest and get a moment of "air time". Other steep climbs that make you pray there is actually a road over the top, and occasionally -- there wasn't. You crest and the road is twisting off one way or the other. Brakes, turn, power the corner, fight the understeer and off to the next one. Great fun, at least for the driver.
My navigator, unbeknownst to me, has a tendency towards carsickness. In this situation, actually just about anybody would have a tendency for motion related disorders. This was a serious stretch of road, at least by Ohio standards. I come from a hillier part of the world where this kind of driving is the norm.
I hear a small voice. "I don't feel very good." We go into triage mode and determine that she needs to not be riding in a car at the next available opportunity. Problem is we are not near camp, we are actually not near anything. We pull over to inspect a turn and Rick and I confer. He also loans me batteries for my dead GPS which comes to life and gives me at least some spatial awareness.
I had a plan. Head south. OK, I had a semblance of a plan. That gave us options such as better roads, Internet access, places to stop, and a way to get back to Route 13. The we could use some other directions from the Forest Service that guide you in from the south. A suggestion was made to retrace our steps but it did not seem like a great idea to drag Laura through that section of road a second time. So we head to the south end of the park, cut over to near Athens, download the directions once we got into some 3G, and within about half an hour we had arrived at the entrance to our campsite.
We made one additional stop in a little village so I could share my plan with Rick who was still gamely following me. Right about then a pickup pulls up with a couple of good old boys, who actually rather politely asked if we were OK. We assured them we were, and upon questioning they learned we were looking to camp in the forest. They gave me the look, and told me that I had been driving alongside the park for about 10 miles. They never called me a dumb-ass, but the sentiment was there. The fact there was not a road leading into the park did not dissuade them from wanting to offer up advice about going back the way we came, but my plan to seek Route 13 via Athens was pretty solid and that these guys were swigging Budweisers when they pulled up helped Rick and I to decide we were probably better off figuring this one out ourselves. I appreciate their kindness though and I believe they actually wanted to help.
So we pull away with Laura hunkered down in the back seat making cat-like mewling noises every time I turned a corner. Barb (my new navigator) and I zeroed in on the new route with military precision and aided by real directions got us to camp. We had lost about an hour, which no doubt felt like a day and a half to our carsick hiker, but we were safe and sound and there!
By now you have already established that if I had stayed on Rt 13 from the get-go (remember Rt 13 is the exit off the freeway) we would have just cruised right into our site. I get that now. Of course I got the questions about how I could get lost when I had been here before. Once, five years ago, in the daylight, with no Google maps.
I still feel bad for poor Laura ... she is a special person to me and I felt absolutely horrible making her sick in the first place and then continuing to add to her misery as we went.. But the options were limited and we had to keep moving and she may not have noticed but I slowed things down a lot and stuck to good roads and tried to keep the motion down (the Forester is pretty tight but it is still an SUV). Thankfully she recovered well and to her credit she rode back home with me. I appreciate that vote of confidence, even though really what choice did she have?
So we arrived. The park had scored a victory. Combined with the rain on Saturday we were really building a deficit in this game. The question is, who won? Wildcat or Hikers? We had fought hard and we were not ready to give up yet! Stay tuned for second half action coming soon to Reboot, Select Adventure.
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