Hiking...or the attempted hike

I woke up yesterday morning a little on the crabby side. I'm not sure why other than I've been so busy lately that I haven't had a lot of sleep, or time to myself. I'm one of those people that recharges by being by myself. I like being around people but I really recharge with some quiet time to myself. Anyway, I decided that a hike was in order. I asked my friend Samantha if she wanted to hike the ledges with me. The ledges is an uphill, 2-mile hike that has the most amazing view of the river valley. We decided that since the state was closing our road for road work for the next 5 or so months that we would try to get out before they closed it, grab sandwiches somewhere, and then take a nice hike to the top of the ledges where we would have lunch. We should have known that our day would take a different turn when they closed the road sooner than expected (although the closure had been delayed by about 6 weeks, they said it would close around noon on the 21st).We took the detour and ended up picking up sandwiches and had a nice drive to the hiking spot. The hiking spot is actually on private land at the end of a really long dirt road. In the middle of nowhere. I am telling you this in case you saw the first picture above. We were almost to the top of the trail when out of nowhere there was a rattlesnake! Samantha almost stepped on it. Thankfully the snake was facing the other way and she saw the snake before anything bad could happen. So we were literally stopped in our tracks! We stood there for about 20 minutes trying to decide what to do. We threw some rocks and sticks near it trying to get it to move on. There wasn't room to go around since they can strike the length of their body. The snake wasn't the biggest rattlesnake I've ever seen but it was a nice one.Needless to say, we decided to move on. We turned around and hiked back down the trail. I ended up slipping on a rock and skinned my knee up pretty good. I love a good war wound! I just wish I had a better story to tell other than I was hiking back down the trail. It would be so much cooler to say that we were being chased by this bada$$ rattlesnake and in order to get away from it we had to bushwhack through the mountain where I slipped and almost succumbed to the snake. But alas nothing that exciting happened. I just totally wasn't paying attention and the trail is loaded with rocks and it was wet. I did comethisclose to hitting my knee on a rock that was sticking straight up. But again, I just landed in some mud with a few tiny rocks, enough to skin up my knee.So we got back to the car and followed a trail along the creek that led to the railroad tracks. We were trying to get to the river so we could eat lunch there. All this is apparently totally legal. The person who owns the property allows people to hike and fish from their land. There are signs and cameras along the way stating it's legal as long as we are nice and respectful. Anyway, we got to the railroad tracks and realized we didn't have a clear path to the river so we backtracked and ended up by the creek instead. There was a lovely spot to stop and eat lunch. And then I took my "LLBean" picture to enter into their yearly spring photo contest. Maybe I'll win the $100 gift card?!?So even though our best laid places were thwarted by the rattlesnake, we still ended up walking a lot and had a nice lunch by the creek. We also found a waterfall where I practices 'shutter priority mode' on my camera. I'm beginning to understand how it works. I also ended up going to bed super early and getting almost 12 hours of sleep last night. I think I really needed that. I feel recharged and ready to get things done!