The great outdoors - this is funny, believe me

Well, we just had our second anniversary. Isn't it strange how that amount of time can feel so long, and yet you can feel like it's flown by?
So anyway, in celebration of said anniversary, we decided that we needed to get off our butts and DO something. We just got these great new backpacks that we took to Europe, but they hadn't actually been used for backpacking yet, so we decided to do that. Of course we had no idea where to go, so we went to Barnes and Noble to get a book on the area. We picked up one about the Appalachian Trail, and headed out to the Western side of Mass to get started. Before we get to the funny stuff though, you have to know how the book is set up. There are 29 some individual hikes, but they are all in a line, because they are all part of the Appalachian Trail. So really it just gives you different places to get on and off the trail, and the distances and difficulty levels and such.
So, back to the point. We picked a hike that was supposed to get us up to a little camping area that had a water supply. We wanted to go easy and just see how it was with the dog, and this was supposed to be a 1.6 mile hike. We were also excited that we didn't have to carry as much water, because we could refill when we got there. At 0.4 miles, we were going to cross the I-90 footbridge, and then go another 1.2 miles to the camping spot. We got to the trail around 5:30pm, so we thought we would get there in plenty of time to get camp set up before dark and everything.
So we start off, and we're both feeling a little uneasy about the directions in the book. We hike for 15-20 minutes, and we're thinking, "Shouldn't we be hearing cars by now?" And "Why didn't he mention that we have to climb this huge hill?" Then another 15 minutes goes by, and we cross a road. We take out the book again and notice that maybe the map in the book was upside down, in which case we'd be passing a road before I-90. Also we thought we may have to add another half mile or so onto the estimate if that was the case. So we keep going.
We walk for another 30 minutes, and by this time we've gone up one hill that we thought was pretty massive, back down, over that road, then up onto the top of another steep hill. And we're thinking, "That was supposed to be 1 mile or something, and we still have another mile to go at least, after I-90." We were totally soaked in sweat, and we had completely drained one of our two Nalgenes full of water. At this point we figured there was nothing to do but at least go down to the bottom of the hill, because I-90 MUST be there. So we went down the hill, and BEHOLD! There was water! The book had said we would be able to see a pond from the I-90 footbridge, so we were happy that we must be going the right way.
Then the trail took us down to the water. At this point the sun was setting, and we were getting really worried about having to go another 1.2 miles at least, when we figured we must have only gone about a mile so far... And on top of all that, we could not hear or see I-90... Time to break out the book again.
Matt then figured out that the next hike in the book had the same starting spot that we started at on our hike, but it went the opposite way. He started looking at the map, and noticed that the landmarks went something like this: Summit the first mountain, cross Tyne Rd, Summit the second Mountain, pass by Figerty Pond... WAIT that sounds like what we just did! And the distance to do all that... 2.8 miles.
The worst part was that after all that exhausting sweaty hiking, we had already tapped into our second bottle of water. There was no place to get water that was even close to where we now were. There was no way we were going to last any amount of time with how much water we had. So we ended up sleeping there for the night, and then we got up early and had to go all the way back with half as much water.
BUT we did it, it was an adventure, and Dakota LOVED it! She was just going crazy running up the trail, back to us, up the trail again... And once we got the tent set up she did about 20 laps in a big circle around it at full speed.
Next time we're going to pay a little more attention to which direction to go on the trail. =)