A Beautiful Week of Walking

My brother, another big walker, and I after a walk.

Wyke and I have had many adventures this past week.  We have walked with friends both four-footed and two-footed, we have walked in the hills, in a park, around the golf course and we have walked the big walk of 8 miles that we call The Hatley Acres walk.  My feet are sore again but I am being pretty diligent about stretching and doing the various exercises that my yoga teacher has given me to do.  Plus I massage my feet with a tennis ball every chance I get.  In addition, Yoga started back up again here in Canada and after just one session my whole body felt remarkably happier.  So glad to have that back in my life until I get back to South Carolina.  My big gift to myself was a new pair of really good walking/running shoes from Hoka One-One.  My daughter recommended them to me so I ordered them and have now done two long walks with them.  My feet are happy in the shoes and I am hopeful that the sore heel will go away since I am not wearing the shoes that caused the problem in the first place.  They are all ready for my Pledge the Pink walk in September and the tune-up Love you to the Moon and Back 4.77 in August.  That’s 4.77 miles per day for 15 days.  Hmmmm!

The hills around our lake are absolutely gorgeous at this time of the year.  The sky is a deep blue and the hillsides a very rich fertile green.  The contrast takes your breath away.  The air has been so clear in recent days with low humidity – except the day it rained – walking is a pleasure.  We did a couple of walks in Scowen Park with one of Wyke’s buddies.  The dogs had a ball and ran and played the whole time.  They are both very blond golden retrievers, Millie is seven month old, and they have a definite affinity to mud.  Lots and lots of mud.  If there was a little mud to be found they found it, rolled in it, dug in it, lay down in it and generally took a bath in it.  The number of times that I have had to take him to a beach to wash him off as now exceeded all expectations.  In addition to the mud, Wyke as a very strong love of dead things.  He found every single dead thing he could on our long walk and needed at least two swims to clean him off.  We avoided the mud but could not avoid the dead things.  What is it that makes a dog think that his beloved human could possibly prefer him covered in ca ca?  There was no way that Katie and I could continue our walk without stopping to rinse him off in the lake, it was just too unpleasant.   As a result of all these tantalizing stops by Wyke and the subsequent washing off, our walks are not the fastest they could be but my credo is, I am out there moving for two to three hours every day and that is certainly better than sitting in my chair for that amount of time.  Been there, done that when I was working and I used to dream about being outside and walking.  Now I am living that dream.

The grand total for this week was 29.23 miles via Runkeeper.  I know I walk farther than that on a daily basis because my Fitbit tells me so but my planned walks amounted to almost 30 miles this week despite the fact I took Thursday off to play golf.  So all in all it was a great week for walking.

News from Camp

The picture speaks for itself.

We wait, anxiously, every day for news from the camp.  This week we were rewarded with not only news but pictures.  From what we can see, Libby is enjoying her time up on Lake Temagami at Camp Wabun.  The pictures show a young girl who appears to have embraced the Wabun way and canoeing for transportation.  We hear that she has taken to portaging like a pro and that she is an active and willing member of her section.  Her smiles make us smile and her confidence in herself and her ability to do things she never thought possible,  is growing.  We couldn’t ask for more.  The pictures of Jack are from camp and from their trip by bus to where they put in to start their long trip.  We won’t see or hear anything about him for another few weeks.  He is somewhere on a river on his way to Hudson Bay.

Recipe to Try

A new take on a summer sort of potato salad, sort of green bean salad and sort of Caesar Salad.  We tried this recipe this weekend and found that it is much better when it has been made ahead and then chilled.  We served it with hamburgers for dinner on Saturday night.  Give it a try.

[mpprecipe-recipe:105]

Congratulations to my sister on becoming a grandmother for the first time and to my niece and her husband on the birth of their new baby girl.