Having decided one covered bridge was not enough we made our way from the Swamp Meadow Covered Bridge just a half an hour away to the Carl Erickson Covered Bridge which is in Pulaski State Park. This would have been helpful information to have as this is when our little adventure started to go sideways. It had no address to type in so I was at a loss on how to find it. Fortuneately although my GPS was clueless my phone believed it knew where it was so I handed the phone to my probably begrudging navigator and off we went!
We managed to drive within a mile of the covered bridge when we came to an open gate. I believed it was still an accessible road, my companion did not, so I let him convince me to park at a nearby picnic area so we could walk. This park was large but seemingly completely deserted. We didn’t see any other people and scarcely any other cars parked anywhere. Since it was only a mile hike he didn’t bring the water he usually does. Mistake number two.
It was in the nineties and we both figured a nearby trail probably was going in the same direction as the covered bridge so we took it. It was an obvious trail but poorly marked and it forked off into what seemed to be dozens of other sub trails. My phone was still on and attempting to track us but coverage was poor and it’s responses were flakey. Sometimes we’d be headed dead-on to the central trail which the bridge was supposed to be on, other times we appeared to be walking in exactly the opposite direction. Up hills. In extreme heat.
For once the exercise wasn’t making my legs burn or getting me super tired but that’s when my exercise induced asthma started to set in. It’s yet another way my body likes to randomly try to kill me. I huffed and puffed and tried not to push it too far. I’ve never been officially diagnosed so it’s not like I had an inhaler or anything. For the past thirty something years I have forgotten to bring up this issue to my doctor. Stupid me only remembers it’s a problem as it’s happening. Because I have the attention span of a gnat.
If that wasn’t enough I was starting to overheat. Bad. Heat rash crawled up my arms and turned my whole face beat red. My travel companion wanted to go back to the car but by this point my phone was telling me we’d already made 3/4ths of the journey so I convinced him we should just keep going. It wasn’t too much longer before we hit the Central Trail…. which was a road. The same road I’d parked near. We could have driven to the damn bridge! But no, we had .4 miles to go. On any normal day that’d be quick and easy. Not so much when you’re dying of heat stroke.
“I hope it’s over a big river! I need to dip my feet in cool water!” Every other time I have suffered this level of heat exhuastion a river has always rescued me and if it was deep enough I was jumping in. I did not care for proper manners at this point.
FINALLY we found the bridge. The bridge made for cars. Over a road. And the river it traversed…. which was tiny. More of a gurgling brook than a river. And it smelled of algae but I did not care. I lopped off my shoes and into the water my feet went. BLESSED COLD!! I splashed my legs and arms as well making sure not to get any water on my face… I didn’t want to add weird wilderness parasites to today’s damage report. I splashed for a few minutes but my travel companion was being eaten by bugs so we decided it was only a mile down a flat even dirt road to the car. Being refreshed from the river I ankled it pretty fast for about a tenth of a mile before heat exhaustion caught up with me again. I couldn’t keep up. At all.
So I threw the keys at my travel companion and told him to have fun finding the car as he apparently was born in the bowels of Hell and is completely impervious to heat. I’d be here somewhere along the road ready and waiting to be picked up. I cannot tell you how frustrating these situations are for me when my body just fails me. It wasn’t long after this I was forced to stop walking because my feet broke out in heat rash and literally felt like they were cooking from the inside out. Every step felt like I was walking over hot coal. So I sat on a rock, cursing, and resting for about fifteen minutes before I tried again. Luckily by then the Prius was driving up blaring bizarre music so I knew it had to be the right Prius! I hopped in and drank a liter and a half of water in two long draughts. Would have drank more if I could but at that point I’m pretty sure I would have puked it back up again.
Back at the beginning of the road I got back into the driver’s seat and we decided where to go next. We’d wanted to find a nearby ghost town but that was out of the question in the state I was in. Our other thing to tick off was the haunted Tavern on Main but it wouldn’t be open for another two hours… so we just drove into town, parked at the local dollar store, and walked up and down main street revisiting the country’s oldest consecutively run general store and the numerous antique stores. After which we did in fact make our way to the Tavern on Main. (And I know I complained A LOT in this entry but the bridge was sweet and the walk through the woods was beautiful! I was too busy trying to stay alive to take any photos but it was otherwise very enjoyable!)
