It Burns. It Itches.

Oh.Lord.Help.Me!

Let's backtrack 6 miles Tuesday night.

Doug and I head to Shawnee Mission Park to hit the mountain bike/horse trails as we have a 50K coming up next week and haven't been on the trails in weeks. First we had to knock off the old caked on mud that was there from our last run. Then we head out for our 'regular' 4.5 mile loop. It was closed due to the rain we've had recently. So we head down to the horse trail we've been on once before.

We guide our way through the 2 miles we're familiar with. We get to 2 miles and instead of turning around, we decided to continue on. I thought I had heard Bad Ben (our Trail Nerds Leader) tell us that there was a 6 mile loop they continue on. So we thought we could continue on and loop back to where we started.


Not so much...We ran and ran and knew where we were-it was just getting to the road to get us back. We finally ended up at some private horse stables and tromping through the pasture, through kids training, through some lady trying to catch her horse, horses following us wanting some love and through horse crap. We finally got to the road to head back to the park.

We had a great run. It was fun. The sky was blue. The temps were cool. The deer were everywhere. We probably saw over 40 deer. The trails weren't muddy at all. It was a great run. We just didn't loop back around to where we thought we were going to. Which wasn't a big deal either. We just covered a few more miles than we expected. Probably needed it anyway.

By this time, Doug is starting to itch and scratch and I'm thinking it's just the weeds we've been through that have scratched us as we went through some not so frequently traveled trails.

We finally get back to the car and the Trail Nerds are just getting ready to take off. Doug's scratching and Bad Ben nonchalantly says, " I think you may have some seed ticks". I'm like cool. Til I look down and they are EVERYWHERE. On Me too! Hundreds of them. OMG! Help! So it starts. I immediately start itching and scratching. It burns. It itches. Oh please help. It won't stop.

We get in the car to book it home. When we get there, I hop out of the car, jump in the shower and scrub down. Doug scrubs down. When we get out, I feel better. Whew. Then start looking and they are STILL everywhere. They won't come off! I jump back in the shower and scrape and scrub yet another layer of skin off my body. Ewww...Gross...How disgusting!

Finally...I think I'm safe. Now that I've had two showers, it's time for a couple beers and The Shield. Then maybe another shower before bed for safe measures.

**Update Wednesday Morning***
Marci-YES! They are the five legged crawly critters. Totally ick!
I was up half the night itching and thinking I still had these boogers on me. It was pretty restless. Found out this morning, these puppies welt so now I have red bumps everywhere on my legs and they still itch from the bites. Grody!!