Adventure Hike

I like to hike. But for the most part, I like to know exactly where it starts and where it ends, and exactly where the trail is in between points A and B. I am becoming a more spontaneous person (went to Richmond twice last week at the last minute) but I wouldn't normally put spontaneous with hiking!
Matt and I knew we wanted to hike, then camp, then hike some more, and we knew the wilderness area where we wanted to do this, but we had never been there before, and thus the adventure started! We got a late start as it was about 4:30 when we started and the sun sets just after 5, so it got dark fast! The moon was nice and bright for a half moon, but with our headlamps lit, we trekked on looking for a good camping spot for the night. There were no markings for the trail (something we are used to when on the Appalachian Trail) and it was hard for us to tell if we were even on it at times! There was a creek that was not too full of water and this helped us because I think we crossed it 5 or 6 times before we saw a fire in the distance and made our way towards it, hoping to find others who could help us figure out where we were. Success! Wefound people, got back on the trail, and eventually found a great place to make a fire, have some dinner and sleep for the night!

We thought for sure that when we got up in the daylight and started hiking again it would be much easier than the night before, but we would soon be surprised...We were on the trail for a while before deciding that if we went through the bushes and maybe even across the creek again, we would be closer to a different trail- the one we wanted to get on to get back to our car...After about 3 hours of getting stabbed by prickly bushes and crossing rocks over creeks and getting our feet wet when slipping on the rocks, and finding trails but then finding the end of them, and walking straight down through the creek for a while, and looking at the map we had in our hands over and over to see what we were missing....

We finally found our way back to where we had found the people with the fire the night before! YEAH! Although we originally imagined that in daylight we would find our way so much easier, we were put in our place! It was not any easier with the sun than it had been with the moon! And when we finally made it back to our car and the main map of the whole wilderness we found out that the trail we were trying to find for those 3 hours did not exist on that map like it did on the one in our hands!! We had made our own trail! So adventurous and spontaneous! And no one got hurt!