My husband, son and I took a trek into Parke and Clay counties Sunday.

It all started out in good fun. We got home from church, and we decided we'd have a picnic. I needed some foliage photos, so we chose to go to Turkey Run State Park. There, we figured, we could have lunch, hike the trails, take the photos.

We had a lovely picnic. We hiked, and we found a millipede (it was the weirdest thing!). We looked at the rock formations, and I explained to my son how you can tell how old a tree is by the rings. We took photos and visited the Nature Center.

As we were leaving, my husband mentioned he'd like to take some photos of the covered bridges in Parke County for the paper he works for (which is not nearly as good as mine and shalt remain nameless). Since we were so close and he has his camera too, would I mind if we did that?

Not at all, I said. I had a pork roast at home in the Crock Pot, so supper was already taken care of.

We found about three bridges. By the time we happened upon the third one, the sky opened up and it started to pour.

Then we realized we were lost.

Then the "check gauges" light came on, alerting us that we were down to 2.3 gallons in the gas tank.

Then we realized we'd both left our cell phones at home.

My husband kept driving around the bowels of Parke County in the pouring rain, like we had all the gas in the world. He kept telling me we were going to run out of gas. It was one of those things ... I'm sure you've all experienced this with your spouses or significant others ... where he kept saying something to me like I was supposed to come up with some brilliant solution.

Let's see, Einstein ... we're almost out of gas, we're in the middle of nowhere, I have no sense of direction so I can't tell you where to go (though by this time I really wanted to) and we have no way to call anyone.

Sorry to tell you, Zippy, but I can't find a silver lining to this particular cloud.

We finally turned onto a road with plenty of houses on it. I kept pointing them out to my husband, telling him to stop at one and ask the people who lived there where the nearest gas station was, because chances were they also needed gasoline to fuel their vehicles and would know.

He drove past about a dozen driveways, telling me the houses looked like someone lived there who might shoot him.

I told him the person in the passenger seat was about to shoot him, so it wouldn't make a difference.

He finally did stop. The man he asked gave him directions to the nearest gas station ... 10 miles away.

Had he driven any further without asking, we likely would have run out of gas.

I sat in the passenger seat, filing my nails ferociously for the next 10 miles. I didn't even bother to ask why he hadn't listened to me when I first suggested stopping. I didn't mention that if he had, it would have saved us about a half-hour of panic and yelling at each other.

I used to think the thing about men not asking for directions was a cliche ...