climb every tree trunk??

we've heard of "climb every mountain" but this is ridiculous!

jack and mommy went out for a nice long walk today. and since we've resumed walking, we've mostly been sticking to the neighborhood. but today mommy decided that she needed to push herself a little more and so we headed down to the trail (which is 1.5 miles just to reach it!) and cruised along, detouring onto a secondary trail, before heading home.

and that's when we encountered this. just before the second trail met back up with the main road back home, there was a ginormous tree blocking the entire path.

no doubt a casualty of the deluging rain we've had over the last week. a man passing by said the tree has been down since sunday.

sunday??

it's thursday, people! apparently the county has better things to do ...

so, as jack and mommy wheeled up, we pondered what to do. go over? no. that wouldn't work. it was way too high. under? maybe ... around? let's try that!

well, we did, but the hill up to get around the giant, upended root ball was a little too treacherous ... covered in still-wet leaves and thick with volunteer saplings and whatnot.

so, a woman walking her dog suggests that mommy goes in two phases. once with jack, while she folds down the stroller and passes it under to us. of course jack is not wearing any shoes so he has to be carried.

it was a little unwieldy, but eventually, thanks to our dependence on the kindness of strangers, we traversed the giant tree and carried on our merry way ... up that 1.5 mile stretch that i'm now calling "heartbreak hill" and back home.

did i mention previously that jack is *much* heavier than he used to be?

um, yeah.

maybe we need to drive to the trail!