Fall Family Vacation - Hobbling home

Jordon, Keith, and I were so happy to have a bed to lay down in.  But the fact is, our muscles were pretty freaked out by what we had just done that I don't think any of us slept all that well.

The next morning, each of us were hobbling around like 90-year olds.  Strangely, the pain wasn't because of tight muscles (although, tight they were) but because the bottoms of our feet felt so tender and bruised.  They were so sensitive that it was difficult to even stand and each step/shuffle only got us forward a couple of inches.  Our bodies were screaming.

But the hike was AWESOME!  Glad it was over though.  In the daylight, we went back to see some of the family sites but we almost needed a wheelchair to do it.

The family homestead is now a national historical monument.  This is the cabin where great-grandma was born.  We found a park ranger poking around and made him open it up.  We're family so we could make such demands!  :)

Inside the cabin--that's great-grandma's picture on the right.

There were also a couple of things she apparently left behind when they moved to Wyoming.  One thing was an old sewing machine--legend says it was too big to fit in the wagon.

Keith's parent's and our kids had done a more thorough tour of the homestead the day before when they were waiting for us to finish our hike.  Too bad we couldn't have seen any more ourselves but our feet were seriously messed up.

We said our goodbye's and parted ways with Jordon and Keith's parents then headed home.  We would have stopped a bit more to enjoy the scenery but it was easier to keep everyone buckled in the car so we didn't have to walk.  We were in no shape to chase our two-year old.  There was no way we could keep up!  We drove all the way home in the middle of the night and spent the next day wondering if we had done permanent damage to our feet.  Even Keith--the professional foot doctor--was concerned.  He figures we got some mild frostbite--not quite enough to kill the tissue but enough to cause swelling and some weird nerve pain.

Two weeks later I was still hobbling around and ended up getting a kitchen table diagnosis of a stress fracture.  I guess being in shape for a triathlon wasn't enough for that crazy hike!  I ended up wearing a big cam walker boot for a couple of weeks to finish healing.

Was a month of pain and recovery worth one day of a seriously cool, seriously long hike?

Since I'm no longer limping or wearing a boot...I will say yes.  Yes it was.