The Last of Summer

After settling in from out trip to Florida, we took a family hike to Sugarloaf Mountain.  Sugarloaf was the scene of one of our worst previous hikes.  I had taken the girls and Cayenne about five years ago, and we ended up getting lost with no water, no cell service, and daylight hours waning. https://the-simpson-family.blogspot.com/search?q=sugarloaf

I’ve been trying to get the girls to go back in recent years to have a positive memory of Sugarloaf, but they wanted nothing to do with it.  In fact, our perils of the first Sugarloaf hike only continued to grow each time they told the story about our first hike.  Now if you hear it, we barely made it out alive!  

 

So, with Mark along they were more in favor of trying Sugarloaf again.  We were off to a good start.  We tried a different path and saw some cool sights, then things turned south AGAIN.  We got on a path that was a lot longer of a loop than the girls were hoping for, everyone got irritated, Lyla fell a few times, and in an effort to shorten the hike and get back to the car, we ended up getting lost again.  To top it off, once we got back to the car, Lyla evidently took her nice North Face hiking shoes off outside the car and left them there as we drove off to home.  So…needless to say, Sugarloaf is not for us.  So, when Nina asked if we can finally agree to never go back to Sugarloaf again, my answer is a resounding, YES!

 

Shortly after the Sugarloaf hike, Lyla injured her ankle in a pre-season soccer scrimmage, we ended up at the ER, and she ended up spending the better part of the next four weeks in a boot.  :(  It definitely wasn’t how we wanted to spend our last weeks of summer, but I guess if there is any bright side, at least we had finished our vacations and had made it to the start of August before the injury.  She’s been out of soccer and activity, but as of today, 9/2, she’s been given clearance to get out of the boot and start getting strong again.  She has plenty of ankle strengthening exercises to do, and she’s allowed to do some jogging, so hopefully if all goes well, she’ll be able to at least participate some in this fall soccer season.

On the bright side of things in August, we celebrated Mouse and Pop’s 50th wedding anniversary!  Pops had planned a surprise dinner for the Mouse with the whole family gathered at a restaurant, and it was a really nice evening to spend together both there at the restaurant and back at the Williams house afterwards.  We are so grateful for them and all that their commitment to each other has meant to our family.  They are such a blessing to all of us, and we are so thankful for God’s faithfulness in their lives and the impact that they have had on our family.  We only wish for many more wonderful anniversaries ahead for them.

 

  

  

 

Keeping Busy on a Long Weekend

Lyla’s team is nearing the end of their fall season.  They played their last regular season game, then this past weekend they played in a ScrimmageFest in Fredricksburg. The weather was beautiful and so sunny and warm for November, so it was a fun, but tiring day for the girls.

 

 

The next day, we met at the Williams house to celebrate Poppy’s birthday.  We had a delicous dinner, and I got to meet the famous Layne Gaga for the first time!  Clearly, I was starstruck!

Nina and Lyla had off school on Monday and Tuesday, so after I taught my class we headed over to the neighborhood theater to see the movie Trolls.  The girls had been wanting to see it, and it was very cute.  Lyla’s serious face is because she was acting like the troll, Branch, from the movie.

  

Both girls had practice that evening, and needless to say, I think by the end of the day, the busy weekend had caught up with Lyla.

Tuesday was another gorgeous fall day, and I really wanted to take the girls somewhere hiking that we hadn’t been before, so I decided to try out Sugarloaf Mountain. We made a quick stop to vote, then we were on our way.  I had looked up the trail map to Sugarloaf online the previous night, and it appeared that it had good trails that were accessible for kids and dogs, so off we went!  We had our picnic lunch and started off on the blue trail - exploring, climbing rocks, hiking along, and having a great time!

 

 

 

 

After hiking for about two hours, we seemed to keep walking deeper into the moutain without ever starting to circle back around on our loop.  We had gotten to Sugarloaf around noon, so with the daylight hours shorter, I knew we didn’t have all day to spend on the mountain.  Plus, the terrain was difficult in some spots and the girls were getting tired.  We had almost run out of our water, and we stopped for a minute at a trail crossroads to evaluate where we were.  

 

I tried to pull up the trail map on my phone, but I couldnt get internet service where we were.  I hadn’t thought to print out the actual map at home the night before.  As I turned to look behind us, I saw a sign for the area we parked in pointing back the direction we had come.  I started to have a bad feeling as to why the sign would be telling us to go back the way we came to get to the parking lot if the trail was a loop.  We had been hiking for two hours, so I thought certainly we would have passed the halfway point on our loop and if we kept following the blue trail we would get back to the parking lot.  

 

We starting walking on again and the nagging feeling about that sign wouldn’t leave, so I decided to try texting Mark as I figured he was at his computer at work and could look at the trail map for me since my internet service still wasn’t working on my phone.  I realized my texts weren’t going through, so I tried calling, but either the call would drop because I had lost my signal or when I could make the call, it went into his voicemal.  I started to get a bit worried because we were deep into the mountain and hadn’t seen anybody on the trail for a long time, I’m directionally challenged (to put it nicely), and we’re all tired and almost out of water.   I also tried calling my mom since she always picks up the phone when I call, but I couldn’t get ahold of her either.  We laughed later that it was probably a very good thing I never got in touch with her.  She’s more directionally challenged than I am, and knowing the Mouse, she probably would have set out immediately to try to come find us on the mountain (but probably not thinking to bring water, a flashlight, a map, etc.).  

 

Anyway, as fate would have it, Mark called me.  He had been in a meeting and saw me trying to call several times and stepped away to give me a call.  Mark is very good with directions and located the trail that I was on from a map on his computer and advised me to turn around and hike back the direction we came.  The blue trail was, in fact, a loop like I thought, but in my spontaneous planning, I failed to notice that it was a MUCH bigger loop than I thought.  We would at some point have made it back to the car effectively, but I don’t know if we would have made it back before it got dark on the mountain, and I don’t know how we woud have made it back without much more water and with two tired kids.

 

Nina and Lyla were initally very upset that we had to walk back as far as we had come in order to get to the car, but to give them credit, they did a really good job once we started the trek back.  I wouldn’t let us make any stops, and we hiked back at a blistering pace, but as we started to see people again, recognize things that we were famliar with on the trail, and see signs that we were getting closer to the car, we all got a big energy boost.  We made it back to our starting point more quickly than we had hiked out, and I was one relieved mother when we arrived back at the car!!  So, aside from my spontaneous planning almost leaving us stranded on a strange mountain without water or cell service in the dark, Sugarloaf Mountain is a great place to hike!  :)