I Had Myself An Adventure

This morning I woke up at the ungodly hour for college students of 7:00 for a meeting with the honors section of one of my classes. The meeting went from 8:00-9:30.. and I don't have class until 2:30 on Monday's. I only live a mile off campus so I could have just gone back to my apartment and taken a nap but then I would have lost my precious parking spot. After 11:00 all parking becomes pretty much nonexistent. I figured I should stay on campus and be productive. I decided to use my huge block of unscheduled free time to go for a run in Patapsco State Park, which is located about a mile off campus.

I was looking forward to this run for a few days, until this morning when it was in the 40's all morning. It was in the 70's last week, wtf weather? Anyway, I started my run at 10:00 and had a route mapped out. I knew how to get to Patapsco and figured I would do an out-and-back on the trails so I didn't get lost.

As soon as I started running I felt great. I was a little chilly but besides that was really enjoying the run. Once I got to Patapsco the run only got better. Being on those trails felt cozy in a way that I can't explain. I felt safe, like I belonged there. I didn't know where I was going but I just kept running and running and soaking up every minute of it. When I reached the end of the trail that I took I wasn't ready to head back so I took another trail so I could keep running.

The second trail that I took ended up being a loop and I ended up at what I thought was an entrance/exit to the park just down the road from the one I used. As I approached the clearing I realized there was no road in sight. I knew I wasn't lost, I would just have to retrace my steps on the trails to find my way back. Just as I was about to turn around I saw some park workers and asked them how to get back to the entrance I used. They told me it was faster to take the stone road I had found until it intersected with the road that I had come in on.

Easy enough, right? Wrong. I ended up running through a hunting zone that was on private property with warning signs everywhere. Once I made it back to the main road I was a lot farther away and ended up running on the shoulder of a pretty busy road. I felt relatively uneasy the whole time. To make it even better I wasn't even sure I was on the right road. If I wasn't then I would have been really lost. Luckily I found my way back to campus pretty easily. Despite my little snafu, this was one of the most enjoyable runs I have had in a very long time.