Tree week -- and a mystery

Although this is officially Tree Week, we haven't done anything tree related other than get some books about trees from the library. So this is mostly just a catch-up post. We said goodbye to our visitors on Monday, after a visit that was notable for how little time in the car it involved. We drove a few places, but we also rode our bikes a LOT, and hiked, walked, and swam.

Our hike last weekend was not very successful. We first drove to Chautauqua, thinking to pick up the Mesa Trail from there, but Chautauqua (on a Sunday morning) was overflowing with people and there was no place to park. A wedding was taking place on the lawn, people were having brunch at the Dining Hall, there were hikers hikers hikers everywhere. It was hopeless. So, thinking fast, we drove up to NCAR, where you can also pick up the Mesa Trail. However, as we learned, it isn't that easy. There's a connecting trail, but it's a lot of uphill and downhill, not very pleasant, plus it was terribly crowded. So we hiked for a while and then returned. No matter. It was nice to be out in the foothills.

Our visitors especially enjoyed walking down the sort of paths that are hard to come by in their home city of Los Angeles.

Since they left, we've been Getting Stuff Done, but also just resting. I find that I need a lot more rest than I used to. You'd think I was 64, not 54. I suppose it's because I'm so fat.

Onto a more cheerful topic, one thing we had to Get Done was find costumes for an activity that Rocket Boy and I participated in tonight. It was a sort of treasure hunt, with clues to solve -- a fundraiser for the local historical society. You do it in teams, wandering up and down streets in a designated part of the city, looking for the houses that match the clues. VERY fun. I don't have a photo of us in our costumes, but here are the twins wearing the key parts of our get-ups:

That's Kid A in Rocket Boy's costume and Kid B in mine. They both looked like little angels in my costume, like beautiful little girls, but as you can see, Kid A looks a little tougher in RB's. RB, by the way, looked devilishly handsome in his, and I am told I looked very pretty in mine too. This somewhat made up for the fact that the wigs were HOT. In addition to the wigs, we were dressed all in black, and we had to walk uphill and down for 90 minutes. Let's just say we were a little sweaty by the end of it.

After the hunt for clues, there's a dinner, after which they have a costume contest (we didn't win) and then they announce the winners. We had solved 12 out of 15 clues, but 2 teams solved 14 out of 15 (a run-off trivia contest decided the winner). I definitely want to do this again next year -- it was so fun.

When it was all over, we had a little time before we had to get home to the babysitter, so Rocket Boy and I walked back to the scene of one of the clues we had missed, and finally figured out the answer. On our way, we walked past a mama deer and her two fawns. They were much tamer than the deer in our neighborhood. Here's the mama:

I figured we'd see a bear next, but RB said it was too early in the evening for bears. So we made our way home, where the twins had fallen in love with their babysitter and were not thrilled to see us. We should get out like this more often...