Lunch Time Recreation

So there we were, in the middle of the forest, lost. What started out as our first day of walking during our lunch hour turned into a voyage to another land. Who knew that you could get lost in the middle of the UNF campus? Katie and I set out to burn some calories instead of gain them during our lunch hour. We knew that the campus had a nature trail system that a lot of people use to jog and walk on so we thought we would give it a try instead of walking around the main campus circle. So, off we go, following the yellow arrows with our trusty pedometer and Walmart special jogging watch. We were pumped to actually be walking through the woods, as we are both originally adventurous girls from mountainous states. Our plan was to walk for 45 minutes, leaving us 15 minutes to change back into our work gear. However, the yellow path seemed to take a lot of little zigs and zags and before we knew it we were in the thick of the woodland. Well, as we all know there is not much "untouched" land in cities anymore so we figured we would pop out somewhere on campus and head back toward the University Center sooner than later - wrong. We stumbled upon a huge lake and still no sign of civilization other than the distant roar of JTB and St. Johns Bluff, but who were we to judge which was which. Then out of nowhere comes an old man, jogging along, the same old man who had lapped us at the beginning of the trail. We flagged him down and asked for directions back to our place of employment: "You're going to follow this trail down and turn right then you'll see another smaller trail on the right, don't turn there - cross the small foot bridge (or 2 but whatever) then you'll come to a fork in the road and you'll have to decide if you're going to go left or right back to where you started, got it?" Sure we've got it, and off we go. The "fork" in the road actually is where the path dead ends into the mysterious lake we found 45 minutes earlier. And if we knew which way to go to get back to where we started we wouldn't have asked! So Katie, Eagle Scout that she is, began to judge our direction by the position of the sun! (For those of you that know us, using the sun as our compass is absolutely hilarious). So after about another 20 minutes of walking we do plop out onto campus and began our walk back to work. As we are walking trying to figure out the error of our way we notice that not only are we burning up (it is 80 degrees today) but we have numerous bug bites and our fingers have swollen up to the size of Jimmy Dean sausage links. Great, now we are not only way over our alloted 1 hour lunch break but we are beat read, sweaty and have sausage links instead of fingers! So the lesson for today is: stick to the gym! It has AC, you can't possibly get lost, there are showers and it cuts down on the bug bites!