Picture Birmingham

Mother and child. Doesn’t keep them from fighting over the feeder even though there are five spots for feeding. Logic eludes hummingbirds.

I’m not a great gardener - it’s my second year to attempt it. Plants grow and then die too soon; bugs invade and I can’t make them leave. However, the colors and flavors that do make it through the battle of nature make me so, so happy.

Noah comes in my room. In his normal monotone, he says, “have you looked out the window?” I was distracted and said “yes, it’s foggy today.” Noah, monotone, “I don’t think you have.” I looked again.

If we’d known how hard the hike was, we probably wouldn’t have attempted it - so we’re all extraordinarily glad we didn’t know. The rental house we’re staying in (the cute blue one to the left of the second picture) backs up to Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, and that mountain peak behind it is called The Steeple.

How wonderful that there’s a trail just behind the house up to the wonderful view!

Obviously, we would have to try it. And it was incredible - the views from every angle all the way up were stunning. Also all the way up, the trail was a running stream that sucked your feet into its mud or had slippery rocks or both. And if you chose to step on the tall grass instead, it held hidden potholes to take you even deeper into the mountain. It was much steeper than it looks in photos - the kind of steep that leaves you wondering exactly how much harder it will be to come back down - because it’s quite clearly going to be harder. Every time we thought we’d done the “steep scrambling part”, we got to a steeper scrambling part. And of course the weather changed every ten minutes between sun, wind, drizzle, clouds, and chill.

But we did it.

And it was absolutely worth it. Even while we were trying to figure out how to get back down without sacrificing anyone’s ankles to the mountain. We felt like we truly conquered the Scottish Highlands. And brought half of it back to the house with us, traveling in our shoes.

On the shores of Lochgoilhead, Scotland…
Our travel day(s) got a little more adventurous than we planned when we had a flat tire an hour from the airport, and both the rental car company and roadside assistance kept delaying sending help, so we took the adventure by the horns, figured out how to get a tax back to the airport and got a replacement rental car, turning our 22 hour travel day into a 26 hour travel day. did admirably learning how to drive on the wrong side of the road on little sleep and less food, though I did pull back out my “teaching a teenager how to drive” code words to let him know when he was drifting too close to the left. But we made it, and whatever happens, it’s an adventure!