Ragland

Rose, Reagan, Briar, and I went to Ragland on Saturday. We had a blast. We bought NOW 29 for the trip. Nothing like the same 18 songs for hours being controlled by a 12 year old. I think I know all the words to all the songs now. I was happy the "Love Story" by Taylor Swift made the cut, but even great songs get old when you hear them over and over and over. We went to go hiking. so we drove up this windy dirt road forever. Eventually we just parked, had lunch, and turned around because we were having no luck finding the trail head. We were just about to give up on the whole hiking thing, but Rose asked some guy who was walking down the road. He suggested we go ask the surffer lodge people. This wa a geneous plan. We got to go on out hike. Reagan and Briar were argueing over who got to be in front. I was being super slow and taking tons of pictures. I took over 80 just while we were hiking. Rose got tired of the girls bickering so she told Briar she could be in front but she had to stay in sight. This seemed like a good compormise and the fighting stopped. I got pretty far behind, I couldn't really hear them. But all of a sudden I hear Rose and Reagan yelling Briar's name. Then I hear Briar yell for her mom. i sped up, and reached Reagan at a fork in the path. A few minutes later Rose and Briar came up the path. We decided to take pictures of where Briar got lost. She was bugged because she had to hike behind Rose and Reagan the rest of the hike. We didn't hike to the summit, because we didn't have five hours to go hiking. There was a giant tree that is kind of growing sideways, like it got knocked over but didn't totally die. It looks like there are trees growing off it too. I have tons of pictures of this tree, like 20 or so. Reagan, Briar, and I climbed up and took pics. When we finished out hike we went up to the beach. It is cool because it has black sand. I swam in the Tasman Sea. We played in the waves for a while and then Rose and the girls decided it was time to go under. So we swam under the waves. It was really fun, kind of cold because it was an overcast day. I got some sea shells, and we wrote in the sand. It was a great day. Then we came back to Hamilton to go to the Night Glow, part of the hot air balloon festival. But we missed everything but the fireworks. I was totally wasted by the time we got home. Sunday, we were all a bit sore, but Monday mornign was tough. Rose and I both had aches in all our muscles. Our hike wasn't even hard or long. But I guess that just shows you that it uses different muscles.