Guys we went hiking on Saturday. This is a picture of us hiking in January in Hawaii. The rivers of SC basically look identical.
As per the usual, it was a comedy of errors as only we can create.
First, we went to basically a non-hiking hiking trail. Jay goes to this place to kayak, and there are trails to hike in and out to the river with boats, but not really trails to hike on. But, we wanted to hike and didn't want to go anywhere state-parkish because it was a holiday weekend and we wanted to take the dogs somewhere that wasn't too crowded. Jay also assured me that the trails were great and the water would be super low so we'd not get wet.
So, off we went. We got to the parking lot, unloaded the dogs, and walked toward the river, which was HIGH. Unlike what we'd thought. We needed to cross the river, so we walked up a ways to try to find a spot where we could walk over rocks, which basically didn't exist. So, I put on my big girl pants and walked straight through the river, which at this point was about as deep as my upper thighs. The dogs were none to keen on swimming at this point, and our lab mix had to be dragged through the river. Her tail was wagging the whole time, but she just .... didn't want to do it alone. It was kind of pitiful.
SO. We got to the other side of the river! Jay and the dogs hopped up on the bank, then Jay reached down to help me. I couldn't grab his hand because I was swatting away all these bugs but then but then BUT THEN
OUCH.
Not bugs. Bees. The dogs and/or Jay had disturbed a yellow jacket's nest on the side of the river and we walked RIGHT through it. Jay started hollering to jump in the water and I basically froze, which must have been QUITE the sight. I got stung twice and Jay got a big one on his foot, and we were five minutes into our hike. Awesome. Naturally we didn't turn back because we aren't wusses (yes we are), so we forged ahead on what turned out to be a non-trail at the wrong spot because we'd crossed at the wrong place and then the bees threw Jay way off AND IT WAS TERRIBLE for kind of a long time.
We hiked for about another hour until we found the trail (we weren't far off, it was along the river, we just had to get back to it), then decided that a bee sting to the head being rubbed by sunglasses (me) and a bee sting on the foot being rubbed by wet Chacos (Jay) was enough to cut our little day short. On our way back we realized that we'd LOST ONE OF THE DOG LEASHES because Jay had thrown it down on the ground to help me out of the river which ended with both of us IN the river avoiding bees, and then we just kind of didn't realize it was still there. SO, we had to trek back to where the bees were to retrieve the dog leash, of course.
In the end, obviously we made it through and it was just bee stings. The last time I was stung by anything was about 15 years ago when I walked into a wasp's nest, and that incident yielded 13 stings and a pretty decent fear of anything with a thorn sticking out of it's butt. Jay's dad is allergic to bees and Jay has had some almost-allergic reactions before, so between my longtime fear and his maybe-allergy we were NOT happy campers when we disturbed those meanies.
We felt so silly, too. That night we went to see Jay's bff Adam play music at a bar, and we made it about an hour before my head started to ache too much, and Jay had to sheepishly say "we got stung by bees, we need to go." I mean for realzies. Man up is what we felt we should do but we also just wanted to whine and feel sorry for ourselves, so we did about half and half.
Oh and also, word to the wise? We were on the way back and stopped at Walgreens for some of that antihistamine spray. We sprayed it on and it yielded ZERO results, so I googled it and almost everything said that ice is the best thing for stings and the sprays are a sham. So. Knowledge.
Any traumatic-but-not-really-that-bad stuff happen to you this weekend? Don't call me a wuss, it was weawy weawy scawy.
The end.
Liene K says
Ah geez - you're lucky you didn't get stung more, if you disturbed a ground nest! I've made paste out of baking soda for really bad stings, still worked better than that spray. When they start itching in a couple days I use that itch stick stuff. Good thing there weren't any allergic reactions involved, your story might have ended quite differently.