Happy Memoral Weekend!

Here's hoping your plans include some delightful food, fun people, sweet views, comfortable rest, and great memories! 

#Chooseyourview

We won't be camping, because this holiday weekend is always a madhouse at the campgrounds, and we won't make it to some isolated forest this time.  But we'll think about camping.  Cause that's how we roll, lol.

We're celebrating some family milestones this weekend.  The youngest spawn graduated high school and is excitedly anticipating  college  sleeping in.  I'm excitedly anticipating paying for college having someone else do dishes for the summer.

More later,  and whatever you do, #ChooseYourView !!

Hiking epic-ness

If you refer to the previous post, it says we were leaving for an epic adventure with a hike included.  I was soooo wrong.  It WAS an epic adventure.  It was an epicurean dream.  And it had epic hikes included.

Ireland was a bucket list trip for Sully and me.  Now that it's in the bucket, and we've recovered from  the jet lag, the missed flights, and the stuff stolen from our house while we were gone (story for a different day)- I can tell you all about it.

We did a lot of walking in Ireland, primarily because it's terrifying to drive in that country.  It might be slightly less terrifying to swim with hungry sharks while carrying a chum bag.

But everyone walks or bikes there, so we were right at home.  We needed to keep our strength up, so we had little snacks along the way...

We walked somewhere every day.  Every day we walked somewhere. Some days we walked a looooong ways, like the day we did the trail along Cliffs of Moher, to Hag's Head.  10 kilometers.  Sounds more impressive than 7 miles....

I was sun burned, wind chapped, mud slogged, and totally, totally in love with the wildness, the booming of the waves against the cliffs, and the whole intensity of the walk. I didn't want it to end.

Ireland reminded me in some ways of Oklahoma.  Pastures with trees along the creeks. Cows in the pastures.  A lot the same. Except for the random castles in the Irish pastures. And if you ignore that Oklahoma pastures are kinda gray brown, and Ireland's are a vivid, eye-shattering green. Other than that, a lot the same.

We logged a couple of big hikes for our 52 week hike challenge.  If you haven't checked out #52hikechallenge2016 on Facebook and Instagram, do that now.  Right now.

And then come back to find out more about our Leprechaun Life!

Happy Trails!  ....Saor

Leap, leaping, leapt

In my previous life, which included a previous blog, there was a jump moment.  The economy crashed, jobs, savings, and investments disappeared like smoke, and there came that call to jump - a time and place where you must decide which way to go.



The problem with forks in the road is that they can lead to knives or they can lead to spoons. But I jumped, not knowing what kind of silverware lay ahead, and from that moment emerged a year of adventures, a successful blog that had its own life for a few years, and many memories (some good, some I'd like to forget).



Jump moments are a part of life; sometimes they're hops-over-the-crack-in-the sidewalk, and sometimes they're more like get-a-running-start-and-hope-you-can-grab-the-edge-of-the- crevasse...



Life threw us a jump moment this weekend, and we're backing up for that running start. I've been told that resilient, adaptable people do well in the outdoors. I've decided that in actuality it's that people who live the outdoor life are better at adapting.  The unexpected avalanche, the surprise wildlife, the unanticipated newbie with injuries- the outdoorsperson encounters all kinds of jump/leap/hop/run moments and the experience of living in nature helps us cope with the unexpected.

Sully and I have had our share of adaptability training in the outdoors. We'll survive another jump moment, not knowing what lies ahead, and await the adventures to come...