Weldon Wagon Road, Husum, WA     5/19/2018   Hike#31

We walked the Weldon Wagon Road trail again with friends who were hoping to see the blooming balsam root here, as we had last year.  Instead, we were treated to a suite of later blooming flowers among the fading yellow blooms, including prolific ookow, buckwheat, wild onions, and a few new to me flowers.

 

 

We enjoyed taking the trail slowly and catching up with friends – also saw a few creatures along the way:

CRAFTING:

Not a lot of crafting this week, though many weeds were removed from the overgrown front yard. I added some sky stitches to the Elgol cross stitch.

 

England Trip Report, Part 1

April 23 to May 12, 2018

Some background: In June of 2011, we spent a full week in London with our three teen/young adult kids. Our rented flat in Kensington was like living in a museum. We visited many of the iconic sights – the British Museum and Library, Westminster Abbey, the Churchill War Rooms, Buckingham Palace, the V&A Museum, Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, the London Eye, the Tower and Crown Jewels, St Pauls’ Cathedral, Covent Garden, Greenwich, Abby Road, the Tate Modern, Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, the London Eye. We didn’t see everything, but we saw a lot using the London Pass, which makes it practical to pop into some of the more expensive sights for a short look around without committing a whole day. We then spent another nine days with a rental car touring north of London, including Stratford-upon-Avon, northern Wales, Liverpool, Keswick in the Lakes District, Hadrian’s Wall, then flying home from Edinburgh.

What I missed on that trip were localities associated with my favorite author – Jane Austen. We saw her portable writing desk at the British Library, but I still wanted to get back to southern England to see more of her world.

For this trip, we started in London, and spent a few days walking around and adjusting to the time shift. Then we travelled in southern England via rented car to Jane Austen related places, and to hiking trails.

Day 1: London                  Thursday, 4/26/2018

We arrived in London at noon, which was 2 am Pacific time. We made an effort to sleep on the flight with some success, and managed to stay awake for the rest of the London day. A good start to our journey. We were lucky enough to be able to check in early to our room at the Premier Inn near Victoria Station, then off we went for our first day of London adventures. The weather for the next few days was predicted to be a mix of clouds and rain, and that would affect our sight seeing choices a bit.

Dan wanted return to Covent Garden to find the artist from whom he had purchased a hand painted tie in 2011. Luckily she was there, and he found another tie he liked. I’ll try to post a photo next week.

After refreshing ourselves with a scoop of gelato, we walked down toward the Thames River as the weather was holding  fair.

I noticed Cleopatra’s Needle was in our general path, so we stopped to look there, also, to see the lovely tulips blooming in Whitehall Gardens.

We crossed the river on the Hungerford Bridge, then walked along the south bank past the London Eye.

We recrossed the river via Westminster Bridge,

then walked on into St James Park and toward Buckingham Palace.

Lots of waterbirds and blooming flowers:

 

 

From there it was a short walk back to our lodging.

Somewhat exhausted, we opted to eat dinner at our hotel restaurant – a good choice  considering we could barely stay awake to eat it. We had walked about 5.5 miles including airports and underground concourses. Day one done.

To be continued…