Well, we survived the weekend! I know that sounds a bit cliche, but my kids will tell you that it was really touch and go for a while.

As I said in an earlier post, we decided to do a hike at the Trappist Monastery in Lafayette. Of course, once the kids found out the name of the nearest town, they spent the rest of the ride acting out the various duel scenes from Hamilton. Trust me, that gets old very quickly!

Once we got to the Monastery, we headed out to the trails. Now, we had a guidebook with detailed directions on where to hike. But we saw a sign with a map! And, look, it’s a loop! With that, we forgot all about the guidebook and decided to do the loop. Pat has this thing where he always goes right on loops. The thing is, this rarely turns out well for us–and this was no exception. Had we looked at the guidebook, we would have seen that it said to go left.

There was, of course, a reason for this. The route to the right started out easy enough, but it soon became more rugged, with steep inclines and twists and turns. At one point, we went completely off the trail because Pat was sure the shrine was up there (spoiler: it wasn’t).

When we were about half a mile from the top of the hike, the kids tried to mutiny. They just wanted to go back the way they came. We were all exhausted and probably dehydrated. The kids had some water left, but I had put too much ice in my hydro flask, forgetting how well insulated it was. Pat, of course, was being manly and left his water in the car. I’m not going to lie–I was a mess. My legs were shaky and I was a little dizzy–but we were SO CLOSE to the top! I knew if we turned around and went back the way we came, we (okay, I) would always regret it.

So, I gave my best pep talk and we trudged on. That last half mile took us probably half an hour–Chris and I got in a pattern of hiking for 5 minutes and resting for 5 minutes. But we made it all the way to the top! There was the promised shrine (which Pat and Chris said was underwhelming–of course, Chris said he had expected it to look like the hideout of the Knights Templar) and a spectacular view of my Willamette Valley.

Then, we went down the way we should have come–which was a well groomed, gently rising trail that we could have easily done in half the time in the time it had taken us to go up the right side. While the right side of the hill probably had more spectacular views, the left side would have been more our speed.

So, that was Saturday. Sunday was spent recovering. Other than church, we did absolutely nothing. Both Pat and I were still feeling our hike–even today, I’m still a bit stiff. But, life goes on. Today was working on things around the house and taking a load of broken down boxes to the recycling center. The kids have been watching Ultimate Beastmaster on Netflix, which I can’t believe I’ve started watching as well. I think we all need some sports to watch!

I have some great pictures from our hike, but I’ll be sharing them in my next Saturday Snapshot post (which, as always, I’ll include with my Friday post). However, here is one of Pat and I, looking very sweaty and worn out, taken at the top of the hike.