I should have brought bread crumbs.

I arrived at Bluemont at 9 am for a 10 am hookup for a run with John.  Our schedules had gotten crossed.  Mine was written in ink in my weekly minder, his was entered in his outlook so his entry must have been correct, right?  By the magic of texting, I determined I had 35 minutes to wait so I went down the W&OD Trail EB to do a little exploring on side spurs.

I was lucky to get back 45 minutes later.  I'd headed off the trail NB on a little bridge over 4-Mile Run and was rewarded, as I expected, with a run up a steep hillside to a street at the south edge of an Arlington subdivision.  Running mostly NB on the curvy street, I expected it to intersect Wilson Boulevard shortly, which I would use to run directly back to Bluemont to complete my short warm-up run.  After many blocks, however, I asked a passing couple where Wilson was and they indicated it was still more than a mile away.  When I indicated I was trying to get back to Bluemont, they said I'd be far from there by the time I hit Wilson so they gave me a complicated set of directions which was a shortcut.

I was able to follow the directions, through a part of Arlington where I'd never been before, and emerged at Bluemont Corner, not Bluemont Park, which was still a mile away.  But at least I knew where I was now and I headed down a pathway that I knew would take me to the W&OD not far from where I'd parked my car.  But then I passed by another little side spur dirt trail that went down the hill into the woods sort of in the direction of the W&OD.  I couldn't resist.

The trail ran into the woods, past houses whose other sides must have been on a street not visible or accessible to me, deeper into the woods but always heading downhill so I figured I'd hit 4-Mile Run down there in the bottom of the gully somewhere.  Lost again.  I ran by a person walking a dog who indicated the W&OD was "just over there."  And it was.  I was still a mile away from my car, and I arrived back in the parking lot ten minutes later where John was waiting for me.  We went for our scheduled 2.5 mile run, which really was six and a half miles for me.  Running is such an adventure sometimes.