Since my discovery of Hohes Venn
in April, I've added it to my list of local favorites. We went out with Melissa and the cousins, and it was a stark green contrast to the browns that dominated the landscape last time. The Venn is a high moor-land, with a unique tundra/swampy type of vegetation which is protected in Germany and Belgium. We saw lizards, frogs, and plenty of birds. It was chilly, but light jacket weather sure beats the summer heat!
Here we have a new phenomena: the foot seat. With all of the sight-seeing we've been subjecting the little ones to lately, A-man has realized that there is a nice little travelling seat right beside him all the time: my foot. Well played A-man, well played.
This weekend, KT went with her sister Melissa and their kids to Paris (we stayed home because we'd slow them down significantly), so I decided to explore around a little more in the Hohes Venn area. We were walking on this lame paved "trail", when I saw a guy all geared up who just took off to this little cabin and didn't come back. Intrigued, I circled the cabin and found a little trail behind it: score! Thanks random German hiker. You are my bigger and sweatier version of Alice's rabbit!
Plenty of cool little nooks and crannies in which to eat bananas and throw rocks. And pretend laser-gun-fights, don't forget those. Timmy's sun glasses can apparently shoot said lasers, and what's even more amazing is that Aaron's hand can apparently stop lasers. Like Darth Vader. But I
know he has never seen that scene. Scary, isn't it? Again, indisputable evidence that Star Wars transcends the bounds of merely being a movie. He was born knowing. Knowing about stopping lasers with his hand. Remarkable.
I've been dying for a nice local trail where you couldn't drive a small car down the middle of it: finally, success!
Then we came to a cool little river bed and dedicated the next 2 hours or so to taking pictures, throwing rocks in the water, and breaking rocks open all while trying to develop hobbit-like abilities of maintaining bare-footedness in highly uneven terrain. All the things you would ever want from a river bed.
Timmy really gets into rock throwing: it's always some galactic battle with bad guys and bombing, glorious victories, and Home Alone-esque exclamations of "Yessssss" followed by the rapid pulling of an invisible trucker's horn. Timmy will ask me someday what that's supposed to mean, but I'll tell him it's a 90's thing. Yessssssss!
And like any good hike, the way back was turning into a tired death-march. This is a beautiful representation of that slap-happy moment occurring right before utter exhaustion and dangerous, illogical orneriness. That brief, silly, but troubling moment. It comes on fast, and is over too soon. Far too soon.
