Epilogue

Dishes pile up. Recyclables pile up. Things pile up and you can't do anything about it. You wait for a break and then you go grocery shopping. Next day, you are knocked out. When you get back up again, you do the laundry. You have to prioritize and take care of the most pressing needs first.

After getting away with a week long trip to Oregon last year, I was hoping that I'd get away with this one too. No such luck. But the post-trip struggle lasted only 8 days, much shorter than usual 3 weeks. A sign of improvement? After 19 days of registering more than 10,000 steps almost everyday, it has to be.

It's also a sign that I'm not out of the woods yet. Sure, I did a lot more in this trip than I did on previous ones. But it still wasn't exactly a backpacking trip; it was a moderate trip that consisted driving and easy day hikes. No healthy person would struggle with ADL for 8 days after a trip like that. No healthy person would struggle with ADL for 8 days  after any kind of trip.

Here is the tally of the hikings I did in this trip:

• 8/5, McKerricher State Park, 1.5 miles
• 8/6, Trinidad Head Trail, 3 miles
• 8/7, Upper Cascade Head Trail - 2.5 miles
• 8/8, Sol Duc Falls Nature Trail - 1.6 miles
• 8/12, Nairn Falls - 2 miles
• 8/13, Agnes Trail to Mirror Lake - 4 miles
• 8/14, Bow Falls Trail - 1.5 miles
• 8/15, Johnston Canyon Trail to Upper Falls - 4 miles
• 8/18, Mystic Falls Trail - 3 miles
• 8/19, Augur Falls Trail - 2 miles
• 8/21, Rubicon Trail - 4.2 miles

And here is how my exercise ability has collapsed, from the high of 100,000 steps a week to 22,000, after we returned from the trip on 8/22: