This particular day we decided to go hiking in the afternoon. We started hiking, not really paying attention to how long the trail was or where we would end up. The trail we were on was called Quartz Mine Trail. Well, after walking a bit we did in fact, come upon a huge chunk of Quartz that looked as if someone has been mining. The girls are avid rock collectors and they began to collect with great fervor. There were large and small chunks of quartz in multiple colors: pink, white, and green. My husband and I even collected a few favorite pieces for ourselves.
It was on this day I learned a valuable lesson. I’m from South Carolina. I have had very little interaction with cacti. I saw some cacti with smaller little cacti on the ground. I got the bright idea to take back a few of the little cacti and put it in a pot at the camper- my little cute, pet cactus. I had two pieces safely tucked away in my bag. Juliette reached down for one more piece because- of coarse- I had to have my own and each girl had to have her own.
Well…. Juliette gets the last one stuck to her thumb. I rush in to rescue her and pull it from her thumb only to get it stuck onto my ring, middle and pointer finger. I begin to pull the cactus off my left and with my right hand. I get my fingers free, but now that evil cactus is stuck in three places in my thumb and it hurts- bad. The problem is that you need to pull hard to get it out and once you finally pull it from your skin it bounces back. Finally, I give up. I tell the kids to come on. My husband has left me, walking ahead on the trail. I guess he already guessed how these shenanigans were going to go down.
So, Jay sees me, walking on the trail towards him with a cactus hanging from my hand. I tell him I need help. Everytime I pull this thing from one place it attaches to three more places. Jaelyn has a knife- I borrow it and finally pull it from my thumb and it lands on my pant leg. Thankfully it did not go through my pants and attach to my skin. I kick it off the trail, down the hill and then I empty those evil cacti from my bag as well. I am done with pet cacti! Lesson learned.
We continue our hike without incident, although, silently, I’m seeing the sun starting to go down. It’s well after 5 pm by this time and I’m a little nervous that we will be ending our hike in the dark. Thankfully, we did make it off the trail before it was dark.
Here are some more pictures from our hike:
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