September 21st 2014

This is a bit of an unusual post.  Most things written on this site were written a day or so after they happened, this post is happening exactly 1 year to the day after it happened.  I decided today to start writing a daily post again every day from now until I actually started writing the posts on December 13th 2014 so we can at least have a little bit of a daily record of the trip and preserve some of the memories we made in both text and pictures.  A couple of notes on this approach: first, at this time I was using my phone as my camera most of the time, so the pictures are definitely not of the same caliber as the later posts.  Second, I have a horrible memory, so these posts will most likely be pretty short and significantly less descriptive than the posts after December 13th, but at least they will be something.  

Now on to the day.  

Stacie and I woke up early as usual and decided to go for a walk around the lake.  We had mostly been heading north on our walks in Bowness, but this morning we decided to head through town and see what the southern route held for us.  We picked our way through the small streets and ended up finding a trail heading south out of town.  The day was cooler than most we had in Bowness and it almost started to feel like fall.  The town is really charming and when we wandered out to the lake the views were really bucolic.

We had a wonderful walk and talk and then headed back to the house to see if anyone was awake.  Once the kids and grandma were awake we decided that the days activity would be a long hike to the top of a hill near where we had zip-lined a couple of days ago.  We jumped in the car and headed out to the trailhead.  On the way we dropped Grandma off at Hogshead, a small town with a shrine to the local hero Beatrix Potter.  

Once on the trail we started heading up a rocky canyon and after about an hours climb we reached the summit.  The views at the top were really stunning.

Once we were done with the summit we started heading back down the mountain.  The trail here was through a dense forrest of pine and in some places it completely blocked out the sun, which made it a little eerie, but also very cool, with lots of moss and mushrooms growing everywhere.

Once we made it back down the hill we went and picked up Grandma and headed home for a relaxing afternoon and evening. 

Once back at home we made Tacos for dinner.  This was kind of a special treat as it is hard to find ingredients for some of the regular meals we make at home, and we love our tacos.  However, once the tacos were made we were all lining up in the little galley kitchen to load our plates and Peter rested his right on the edge of the counter.  Once he loaded a taco on the balance of the weight shifted and the plate slipped of the edge of the counter and fell right on his foot.  He fell to the floor immediately and started writhing around on the floor in pain.  I kind of rolled my eyes and laughed thinking he was overreacting to a little pain, and finally said "come on Peter, just get up".  What I did not realize at this point was the plate had fallen right on his big toe, and in the end we have determined it actually broke his toe.  I still feel guilty about giving him grief over how he was reacting to a little plate on the foot.  This is the first real injury for the trip and given how much walking we do it could be a big problem, only time will tell.