Nice Weather and a Long, Long, Long Walk

It has been in the high 50's the last few days so I decided to take the baby I nanny for and explore the many walking paths that wind around Reston. What I thought would be a 2 to 3 mile walk turned into a 5 mile walk with tons of hills and struggles along the way. It all started when I saw this small park that had baby swings, I thought it would be fun to try them out, but I had to go off the path to get to them. We tried the baby swings but she didn't seem to like them very much. I think she was a little scared to be swinging so high by herself. So I put her in my lap and wrapped my arms around the chains to hold her there and we swung together. She liked that better. After a while we got off and I looked down at the sleeves of my white jacket I was wearing and realized that the swing chains that I wrapped my arms around must have been all rusty beause I had rust all over my sleeves! I was a little bugged but oh well I figured I would just spray it right when I got home that night. So I got the baby back in the stroler and we took off. Only, I thought I knew where I was enough to take the side walk back home. That definitely was not the case because I wondered around for a while not seeing anything familiar. I finally came to a point where just up from where I was I saw the walking path. The only way I could see to get to it was by cutting up a steep grassy hill. It wasn't too far away so I figured I could push the stroller up there. Bad idea...what I thought looked like a grassy hill turned out to be mostly mud and some wet grass. I had on white shoes with small decorative holes all over them and no traction. About half way up I started sliding backward. I had to turn my feet sideways and really dig into the mud to catch myself before I feel on my knees. Then the stroller started slipping sideways in the mud! I had to push with all my might while walking up the hill with my feet turned out and as wide as I could to get leverage for the stroller and keep us both from falling in the mud. We finally made it to the top. My white shoes and socks were covered in mud as well as the bottoms of my pants, but at least we were back on the walking path. The only problem is I still didn't know where we were. It took another 30 minutes to find our way home. By the time we got there not only was I covered in rust and mud, I had blisters on both my feet from not having good walking shoes on. I love going for walks but from now on I am sticking to the areas I am familiar with.