Great US Lake Tour 2026

We were up at Natural Bridge, sitting at Bridal Veil Falls, enjoying the scenery, the sound of the water, the whole peaceful nature experience.

I looked down.

On the sleeve of my left arm scurried the biggest, blackest, glossiest spider I have ever seen.

Now, maybe it only looked the size of a tarantula because it was six inches from my face. Science can debate that later.

At first my brain just registered: SPIDER.

My heart skipped a beat and within a fraction of a second my nervous system freaked out. (I don’t care for spiders).

Then I saw the red marking on its backside - BLACK WIDOW - and my fear shifted into a completely different gear.

Apparently there “are” levels beyond “terrified.”

A falcon diving at 200 miles an hour has slower reaction times than whatever happened next.

My survival instincts launched a full emergency response. Yay me!!!

The problem was my coordination and reflexes never got the memo. dammit!!!!

I flicked at monstrous Black Widow with the precision of a cannon fired from a canoe. In other words, I grazed it.

Instead of knocking it off my sleeve, I successfully just pissed it off as I transferred it directly onto the bare skin of my forearm. (So now, rather than having a giant killer spider on my shirt, I had a mammoth black widow on my flesh.)

At that point, my brain shut down. Although I’m sure I’ll have nightmares about it for years, I mentally blacked out from pure terror.

The next thing I remember, I was standing there breathing hard (while Denise was trying not to laugh) and the Widow was on the gravel path posing for a pic (I took it).

Although my imagination has felt stings and bites and things crawling on me for hours, I somehow managed to not get bitten.

Maybe this “no shower” thing is working to my advantage.Lue lisää