A Misadventure -Part 2

A Rescue Mission

The next morning after breakfast we broke camp. The first plan of action was to find a store that might have some gardening gloves, to protect our hands from all the brambles. Finding a machete might not be a bad idea either, but we didn’t hold out much hope of that. We did have a camping hatchet in the car that might help with cutting branches out of our way. We first drove to a small convenience store that was near an ATV park. No gardening gloves but they did have some expensive riding gloves that we bought for Erika. They would have to do. I had my own cycling gloves I could use. 

Next we drove to the nearby town of Pacific City to find some Wi-Fi. I needed to download my ‘ride’ from the day before and try and figure out where I might have left Raven. I got the ride downloaded and could tell that I probably left her somewhere in the last 1/3 of my route. So going backwards on that route made the most sense. It would be really tough going though. I figured out how to create a route from the previous day’s ride and also made sure I knew how to ‘reverse route’ on the Wahoo. 

By some miracle we passed a hardware store and went in and bought gardening gloves along with a pair of loppers and pruners. They even had a machete but I think the loppers were a better choice. 

We drove back to the spot where I came out of the woods and started up backtracking on the route. We kept Ming on her leash because the last thing we needed was for her to tangle with a big animal. We started walking down the overgrown road but the bike computer said we weren’t on route. We turned around and walked back out and went a few paces to the south and now we were on ‘my’ road. It was very tricky staying on the route. The overgrown dirt road split off a few times and it took a bit of back and forth to determine which was the right one in order to stay on route. We had Erika’s phone with the maps.me app to corroborate with but we really needed my route on the computer from the day before. Every so often we made an arrow in the road with some sticks. Kind of like leaving a breadcrumb trail. 

Up till now the going was pretty easy and Erika was enjoying the forest. I kept telling her it was going to get much harder soon but I don’t think she really could imagine what was coming. After messing around a bit with trying to determine the actual route we finally found the place where we had to head into the thick brush. Even with loppers and cutting branches out of our way. it was difficult getting through. We had to take Ming off the leash because it kept getting tangled with all the sticks. Some more back and forth on and off route and through a stream. It didn’t look familiar to me. 

Erika’s energy started to fade. She said she needed to rest and eat so we stopped. She talked about quitting the search, and I thought about how far we were into it, I would hate to give up now. I told her that she could do more than she thought she could, that she was strong. She agreed to go on. 

Starting back up, we soon came to a downed alder with branches strewn about like pick up sticks. It was tricky crawling over the whole mess and somehow Ming got through easily. Every once in awhile we would see some grass that looked trampled and I wondered if that was from me yesterday, or just some deer. Back at a stream again and still somewhat on route I got a little excited when I saw a big tree trunk lying across the stream and it had a big patch of rubbed off moss. Maybe that was from me?! I clawed my way up and over and came to a big muddy patch on the other side. “I was here” I yelled happily to Erika, “I was here, it’s where I realized I was missing the bag with my phone!” I looked around this area again while I waited for Erika to catch up to me. No sign of the bag. “We are definitely on the route” I said and scrambled on. 

I don’t know how much longer it was, but fighting through the sticks and brambles and all of a sudden there was Raven, right in front of me! I couldn’t believe it. There she was just like I left her. I sat down shaking my head with disbelief that we had pulled it off. I mean we were putting so much effort into finding her but I didn’t think we would. 

Underneath her I found an unopened package of energy chews. I ripped them open and handed Erika a few. She reluctantly took them, she is not a big fan of processed energy foods. She was surprised though at how quickly they worked and she felt much better. 

Now to figure out how to get back out of there. Was it quicker or easier to try to find the dirt road that I couldn’t find yesterday but the map showed was nearby? We decided that as difficult as getting in there had been it would be best to backtrack. Still not an easy option. I closed out the ‘reverse’ route and loaded up the actual route from yesterdays journey. While technology is super amazing and we wouldn’t have found the bike without, it sometimes plays the part of the trickster. The route doesn’t show when you want it to, or you point the computer in a different direction and it gets confused for awhile. Somehow we managed to make it back to the stream with the big muddy patch, searching for the lost phone bag the whole while. No luck. We joked that a bear must have picked it up. 

We began to realize that while we were faltering with which way the route back was, the dog knew exactly where it was. So we started following her as well as the computer. Back over the jumbled mess of alder branches and back to the comforting spruce and then the dirt road, with our arrow in it. Four hours into it we felt triumphant and Erika enjoyed her lovely forest walk once again. 

With Raven securely locked into the bike rack on the car we rode along all day thanking our angels; for getting me out of the woods safely, for Erika driving to find me at just the precise right moment, and for getting Raven back. The bear can have my phone. I also thank Erika, bike wife extraordinaire, for even suggesting that we could go look for my bike and being a great sport and tough woman for getting through those woods. We both hope that it was a once in a lifetime adventure.