The Great Dismal Fail

This Father's Day, I took Ella on a hike for the first time. Her dad and I fell in love in nature-hiking, camping, kayaking, and performing other assorted outdoorsie things (that's what happens when you choose to spend your life with a former Marine infantry officer with wilderness warfare survival training). I put Ella in my trusty hiking pack and headed out to False Cape State Park. We had a lovely coastal hike and saw some pretty cool nature along the way. It was a relaxing way to spend what can be a hard day at moments.

Then, I got over-confident...

A few weeks later, I thought, "Hey, that was pretty easy. Why not take the dog? She loves that stuff."

(I have never been good at leaving well-enough alone.)

We all piled into the car (mind you, the dog has an intense anxiety of car rides). After driving for nearly two hours (because I used GPS instead of actually looking on a map to figure out my entrance location to a nearby park), we finally arrived at the trail head. As we started to gear up, I realized what I was about to do: hike in the 98% relative July humidity with a 9 month old, an overweight dog in a park called the Great Dismal Swamp having forgotten the mosquito spray.

We lasted 15 minutes. Ella kept her hat on longer than it took Daisy to start hyperventilating. By some divine intervention, none of us got West Nile disease. Needless to say, it was over before it began (and ended with me in the air conditioned car feed french fries to my fat dog while my heat-exhausted kid passed out in the car seat...it could be measured as some level of success).