Roads Go Ever Ever On

It occurred to me about a week ago (coincidentally when I was home alone for 5 days with no car) that we have lived here almost 15 years and Never Walked To Town. Today, we remedied this egregious oversight.

Our plan was to walk to The Grotto, Talent's fabulous pizzeria, but were very disappointed upon arrival to discover that they were closed for Memorial Day. We managed to walk a bit further and found an open restaurant for a late lunch.

I had thought that the kids would probably be done at this point and they would hang out with Emile while I walked back home to get the car and pick them up. Another short walk brought us to the library park where we lounged in the shade and did a bit of reading.

As it turns out, a short rest resulted in everyone being ready to forge homeward. We took a different way home on back roads, some of which we hadn't actually travelled before. It turned out that one of the roads from my not-so-smart phone's map was really a private driveway. We met Patches, the very friendly farmer, on his tractor and after a short chat he told us we were welcome to trespass any time.

The round trip was about 7 miles... definitely a new record for Larkin and Finn. I'm excited that I can now widen my hike parameters past the 3-4 mile hikes I had been focused on.

In totally unrelated news, the kids and I were recently waiting for some car maintenance at the mechanic. I was reading The Hobbit aloud (again!), Finn was playing on the iPad and (unbeknownst to Finn and I until later) Larkin was drawing Finn's portrait. She had picked up a crumpled, waxy piece of paper from the floor of the car and a random pencil.

I was pretty darn impressed with her first ever portrait effort. We stopped to pick up some better pencils and drawing paper on the way home.