Wednesday on the Homestead

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Good Morning!

I hope you are having a great week so far! I woke up this morning to some beautiful sunshine! I'm certainly enjoying the fact that summer has arrived. I sat on my deck drinking my coffee and soaking in the warmth. I took this pic down my driveway..

A couple of weeks ago my Hubby was in Home Depot and was looking for something and lost his footing and a large, heavy bracket fell right down on his left index finger. It bled horribly and was very swollen. It was late in the afternoon when he got home and felt like it would be fine. The next morning it was still badly swollen so he went in to the doctor. The doctor said there was no infection and asked if he wanted an x-ray. Hubby said no, he'd wait for it to heal up on its own. To make a long story short, after 2 weeks it was still in bad shape and he went in yesterday again. This time they insisted on an x-ray and discovered it was broken. 


I'm waiting now for the call from the orthopedic doctor so we can see what the next step will be. Not sure how they deal with a broken finger. 

Otherwise my week has been pretty routine, which I love. My son and I got out and did another hike on Sunday and I'll share about that below. 



Goals
My main goal for today is wait for the call from the doctor so we can get an appointment made as soon as possible. 

Other then that..

~laundry - finish one load, start another
~sweep & mop my kitchen floor



For the Love of Books!
I finished Call of the Wild and started reading Anne of Avonlea. It's the book that follows Anne of Green Gables. I read the whole series many years ago and loved it. It's worth a reread to me. :)


Projects
I have so many directions on so many things I could go, the problem is choosing which direction. I have some shelves in the basement that need to be cleared off and things sorted and tossed. I may work on that.

On the other hand, we're getting very low on soap and it's been on my list for a long time. I may get out the crockpot and make a batch of soap this afternoon. 


Fitness and Health
My son and I got out and did a pretty challenging hike on Sunday morning. We left fairly early. I think we were heading to the trailhead by 7:30am. We had the blessing of a fairly empty trail, the sun brilliantly shining from the east and the most breath taking views of Gods creation! 

On the trail bright and early..

We climb steadily upwards for about 1300 feet. It was a steady climb and wasn't to bad (unlike last week when we were heading right on up a mountain side).  

The trail was heavily wooded and about a mile on up we got a peek out of trees and were given this view..

 

I'm not sure the picture does it justice. But it's the early morning sun shining on the Columbia River. 

We continued climbing up until there was literally no more "up" we could go. There was another overlook that was quite fancy. I marveled at how on earth they built this way up there..

 




Then began the hike back down. This was a loop trail so we continued on. Towards the end there was about a 1 mile stretch of the trail that was incredibly challenging! We were in it to far to turn back so I just took it one step at a time, sometimes one baby step at a time! It was very steep and rocky. At times the trail got very narrow. At one point I had to sit down to scoot my way down a few large rocks in the hill and at other times I had to turn around and climb down the path using rocks and large roots ladder like to descend. I can say this was my most challenging hike to date. 

In all we hiked about 7 miles (could have been a bit more). At times on the trail I was thinking, "why am I doing this?"  :D Then after I was done and back at the car my thoughts were, "That was AWESOME!!!" ;) :D  

I'm currently looking for and planning our next hike. I think there's something addicting about hiking! :)



View from my Deck
Gorgeous! There's a light breeze blowing and the temps seem just right. Welcome summer....
 



Today's weather: High: 84   Low: 60



That's all for this week my friends,
Crystal

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