Can’t really ride a bike, can’t trail run, can only hike if I’m slow and cautious. But it was going to be a gorgeous warm summer weekend, and it had been nearly four weeks since I’d left town.
So we packed up the car and went driving, and found somewhere nice to camp…
The boy is a pretty confident hiker these days. Although so far his load tends to consists of nothing more than 500mL of water, a snack, a hat, and a couple of toy trains.
We slogged our way up steeply through the trees, then burst out above the treeline, back into the sun again. Such a warm day for early June. Even though we camped at around 2200m, it was still feeling nice and warm.
We have a new tent now – attempts to cram three of us into 2-person tents have been increasingly uncomfortable. We’ve used a larger Tarptent too, which is lovely and light, but we’ve found the single-wall doesn’t work incredibly well with a small and excitable person pinging around the tent.
After some research, we opted for the Big Agnes Copper Spur UL3. We love our Big Agnes Seedhouse 2, and it did a great job over five months of cycle touring, but we decided two vestibules would be a better option. Despite have less floor space than the Tarptent, the angle of the tent walls makes the use of space more efficient.
Consensus so far is that it is great.
The forecast was clear, so we settled in without a fly, then watched the sun set over the mountains.
We all woke up at random intervals throughout the night. Me, every time the boy wiggled about I ended up having to slide him back up his sleeping mat – although he’s getting much better at staying on his mat and in his sleeping bag, rather than just trying to crawl onto my mat and into my bag (thank goodness).
Alex tends to sit up suddenly when he hears odd things, which invariably wakes me up too – the most threatening thing heard through the course of this night was just a small mouse that was hopping about in our shoes.
A lazy tent morning, followed by breakfast on our grassy slope, as the sun popped up above the mountains and started to warm us up.
And then a careful descent back down the hill. I was relying heavily on my poles, concentrating terribly to avoid re-injuring my knee… which is gradually feeling better, but I still can’t pedal without pain. But at least I can hike!
