We live down in a valley, and the tops of the ridges along the sides are forested; you can walk for miles and miles on paths through the trees and end up in one of several neighboring towns. Getting onto the trail is not quite as simple as walking out your back door, but it is still fairly accessible. Once we got Hannah out of the car and onto the trail, she turned into a completely different kid. I told John that her “wilderness” personality was way preferable to her “civilization” personality.
Hannah’s class has gone hiking in the woods at least once a year for the last four years (and it seems they went about 4 times this past year alone), so we let her be the tour guide. She managed to find a particular stream she had told us about.
We followed the stream a ways and came across a beautiful meadow awash in sunlight.
John wanted to go all the way up to the source of the stream, but Hannah had to pee (she was so busy complaining and carrying on that she forgot to go before we left the house), so we only made it to a large puddle where Hannah managed to catch a tadpole and the drinking fountain across the path.
I had bought a pedometer recently because I want to make the trek to Rivendell, so I gave it a try on our outing (full photo set here). I did not try to measure any moon-walking, which is expressly mentioned in the directions for the pedometer, but if it worked under the “tricky condition [sic]”, we went about 4 kilometers. Now that I’ve got all the settings the way I want them, I’m toting it along to Scotland. If I’m going to do all that walking, I want it to count for something!
The Venus flytrap is blooming. Bet you’ve never seen that before!
And Hannah had a run-in with some food color when she tried to make silly putty from scratch using a recipe out of a kid’s experiment book. Grrr... fire bad!
And Happy Birthday to John (yesterday)! He’s finally caught up with me, at least until February, when I race ahead again.
See you back here in about 10 days with the full Scotland update.
