I did one of the stupidest things possible today. I got lost in the woods. I was trying to figure out if there is a trail from our place to our church since there are a lot of walking trails in the area. The verdict is “maybe”, but I did not find it! After the walking trails entered at a church near ours, I entered the woods, just intending to follow the trail I saw there. After about 3 minutes of walking, the trail petered out, but I convinced myself that it could not be much further. Thus, I did the stupidest thing ever, abandoned all my training ever, and started walking through the woods off the trail without a map, compass, water, food, or shelter about 2 hours before dark. I kept telling myself I would just go back, but I soon realized that I was not going to be able to really easily figure out my way back. Therefore, I started trail blazing through the woods going in the general direction I needed to go (I think). After a while, it started seeming hopeless. I was a bit worried, but two things helped 1. I had a cell phone with signal and 2. I could hear cars straight ahead and I thought to the left (which was the way I expected to have to go). Anyway, after a while, the cars sounds more straight ahead and to the right which made me think I had overshot and was going to come out on Broad River Rd. Anyway, I eventually come onto a man-made clearing which I eventually discover is a sewer line. I felt good at this point because if I were not able to figure my way out then I could at least call the police or something and be found. At one point that trail got kind of impassable because of high grass but another trail came off of it that looked like it was travelled well (it had some man made trash around). Anyway, from that trail I hit a rutted trail that looked like it was used by cars. I followed this and came out at a small dirt road right at the Riverland Hills parking lot. I luckily made it out with only a few small cuts from some sharp branches. Here is a rough map of the way I went. One note, for some reason the satellite imagery of this area is really old and our church which was built about 3 years ago appears only as more woods.
Edit: I removed the image because it was messing up page loading.