After lunch we struggled on, across the side of the second hill. Again, the kids complained and cried, and fell down a bit. Shannon later told us she actually enjoyed falling down on the trek—it was dramatic and adventurous for her. Sean and I were getting tense from all the complaining, whining and crying. But the view was perfect and I was enjoying myself already. Besides, the kids always complain and whine, anytime we go hiking, but later they say what fun it all was!

            Thunder was cracking and some lightning flashing as we climbed the third hill. I took the One Ring and chain from Justin in case lightning would be attracted to the metal. We got to the top of the hill, and it did look perfect among the trees-with the exception of cow dung everywhere. It was almost impossible not to step in it—we tried to avoid it as much as we could, especially the freshest ones.

            Sean found a sheltered spot to string up our tarp. He got one tarp tied up as a roof, and we spread the second tarp as our floor. Just as he was finishing the rain started, so we quickly threw all of our gear in and huddled inside. We pulled up all the corners and sides of the floor, and it felt like sitting in a boat together. It was fun and cozy.

            Though the kids hated the hiking, they loved the camping part.

            It rained lightly and steadily, off and on, all afternoon. We finished up the cheese and eggs. The kids were wanting supper, though it was probably only 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon. We could only guess at the time. We couldn’t tell if the rain would stop enough for us to start a fire and cook supper or not. So, at Sean’s urging, we went ahead and ate the Lembas Bread, which was for tomorrow’s lunch. Sean said if need be he could go get more from the van. We were probably only 1 mile away from the van, and later I noticed that we could actually see the van from our campsite, in the distance, at the top of the tallest hill beyond the woods.

           In case you're wondering, for the Lembas Bread we used an emergency supply total meal food bar, which was sweet and lemony and dense.