Not the Hike I Planned

The Buckeye Trail got me good today. I had a late start due to waiting for a new mattress to get delivered, and I decided I would head up to Lockington Dam and try to look at the Buckeye Trail in that area. However, the parking lot was closed for construction. A sign said I could park by the street, but I didn't feel comfortable doing that this time. I decided to go elsewhere.

I ended up in Lockington itself and came across the locks in the middle of town. They had the blue blazes on them, which I thought was odd since my rudimentary information about the trail didn't match up with that. I parked and began to wander around it, and I decided to hike as far as I could. It wasn't the dam, but hey. I probably should have stayed on the more east side, but I didn't feel like backtracking, so I climbed down a somewhat more technical section. This involved a short drop, which looked really easy. I was wrong. My right foot came down hard, the heel hitting stone instead of the dirt I thought was there, It hurt almost as much as when I almost lost my foot to an office chair back in 2019. I am stubborn though, so I continued the hike. 

I made it practically to the end of the historic area when I turned around. I came across a couple from down near Dayton that were checking out the locks, and I re-hiked much of it talking to them. It wasn't a long hike, but we did make it to the creek and the end of the maintained canal bed. (The part the donkeys or horses or whatever ended there, maybe on purpose, maybe from the 1913 flood.)

We were almost back to the parking lot when the guy from the couple asked if the lens cap on the ground was mine. Now, I like to believe I am very careful with my lens caps. I tend to keep them safe when I take them off, and this was a weird place to drop one. Still, I looked, and sure enough, it was a Sony 40.5mm lens cap. I picked it up, and it had a fine layer of red dust on it, just like my hiking boots. I thought it was weird, but as I held it in one hand, I reached back and grabbed my lens cap out of my back pocket. Yes, it was still where I left it, and an identical lens cap was in my hand. Nobody else we saw on the trail had a camera, so it had to have been there for a while. I guess now I have a spare lens cap. I can't say that in my twenty-five years of using SLR's or better that I have ever had an extra lens cap. I think I only bought one cap on its own in my life, and that was when I bought a used lens that lacked said cap. 

I headed home, actually following the blue blazes along the road in my car as much as I could, and got my shoes off. My foot still hurts, especially if I try to bend it certain ways or to walk on it, but I am optimistic. Work won't bother it, so it should heal quickly. I think I am going to have to buy the real maps of the trail though, but that will have to wait.