It’s not what we expected for today. And you didn’t expect to have Karen posting, but here I am.
Rick is officially overheated with a nasty case of heat exhaustion. He woke up miserable in the middle of the night and is still feeling the effects. It’s been rough.
We both laid awake for hours last night concerned. Did he need medical care and if so where to get it? How do we handle yet another hot day? What about all of those hot days coming up on this trip? Thankfully, we have come up with all of the answers throughout the course of the day.
This isn’t Rick’s first bout of heat exhaustion. The heart meds he is on after his heart attack in 2017 definitely have changed his relationship with hot weather. We should have known better than to wander around in the heat yesterday after being so spent from the hikes the day before. I didn’t recognize that he wasn’t feeling well… thought our good night’s sleep and morning of rest made things better for him, as they did for me. But the cumulative effect of hot days is significant for him. I don’t like it either, and was quite exhausted/sweaty both days, but can recover more easily. We just need to avoid the heat, and handle it differently when faced with it.
Today was an indoor, all A/C day for us. He was mostly sleeping and I was making sure he was ok. We brought a nice supply of Liquid IV with us (similar to gatorade/pedialyte) which we keep on hand in case of a hangover… we haven’t used them at all on this trip, but they have come in handy today! I also got him some BRAT diet food, which has gone well. His appetite is back, which is a good sign. It will take time for him to get his strength back; we have unfortunately experienced this before.
Thankfully, it cools off here significantly tomorrow, and our forecast for this/next location are really in line with what we need. So that is good. We are completely fine with little to no activity, but it will be great to just sit outside again for fresh air and to see our beautiful surroundings!
But we knew that we had to make some tough decisions, which we are completely aligned on. We are grateful that we have been able to completely adjust our itinerary to avoid any more extra warm locations. While it is great to have everything planned, it is nice to know that most places are very flexible, and that we are early enough in the season that we can still get some nice campsites in remote locations.
Therefore, we have eliminated our stops in Las Vegas and Death Valley, as of course these will be warmer than we should try to tolerate at this point. We’ll just have to catch those with a non-RV trip sometime later, maybe even later this year. We were able to find a great (cool) spot in central Utah to fill in those dates, plus an extra day at Great Basin NP. We know that this will be good for us and promote both healing and rest. Plus it keeps us on track for a few more cool things (literally and figuratively) at the end of our journey!
All in all, we will be fine. I am sure of it. We are learning lessons as we go and I’m hopeful that with a good night’s sleep, Rick will start to feel better in the am.
See, this is the real reason that we get up so early to hike! No crowds and better for the dog are good, but we need to stay healthy to keep safely adventuring!!!
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