Another Culinary Hike in the Rain and Sleet

Our plans started dissolving with the rain when our friends (who had planned to meet us) canceled due to the projected rain that day.  Little did I know how wise they were.  I had been looking forward to this particular hike for a while now because it has food and was super close.  At only two stops away from our village train station, I thought this would be a nice easy trip.

Well, it was kind of mostly neither nice nor easy.  Sure, my inner Pollyanna could come up with a few moments here and there when the sun would peek out and the rain, sleet, and hail would stop to soak up despite being soaking wet...and cold.  Did I mention it was cold?  At the end of April, it was pretty chilly.

We are not an umbrella folk, so we only own one.  However, we forgot it.  We did have hoods, but most of us didn't think to bring gloves.  Isaac had gloves, but while fumbling to put them on during one of the bad downpours or rain and sleet, he dropped one and somehow we completely couldn't find it.  

And about that sleet...some people may have called it hail, but the man I am married to rejected that label either because he didn't want to admit the whole thing was a mistake OR because he is a closet penguin who is entirely unbothered by any cold, icy weather.  You may know that my husband desires me to be a frontier wife.  He wants a woman who'll go anywhere and do anything, unafraid, and with a positive attitude to boot.  I've come a long way from the days we met when I had to take Valium to get on an airplane, had a ridiculous fear of elevators, and didn't even like to have a fire going in the same room.  However, even I could not muster a positive attitude when we were walking 6 kilometers with no cover, all the while being soaked or dripping wet.  In fact, our only optimistic child (over the age of 5) couldn't even see the bright side until the very end (and I mean the end!)  when the sun finally dried her off and she returned to her normal, bouncy self. I've betrayed the gender of said child, and you know I don't mean Hannah.

How they cook their salmon:  They tie it up to wood pieces around a circular fire.

Eating their salmon sandwiches

But, look here!  We did manage to get some smiles out of them when they finally reached the salmon food stall, way up in the hills.  This is what they had been waiting for all day.  Of course, it was what everyone else had been waiting for too.  The line was insanely long (only at this stall!)  Guess which person hates seafood with a passion, but stood in line for..e..ver in the rain so these people could eat a salmon sandwich.

And then after one last, giant rain/hail storm it finally cleared up.  Look at the sky.  Then the kids dried up and were running ahead for the last bit.  They even asked to go on the bouncy house at the end of the walk, but I was done with this.  We would have missed the train and had to wait an hour on another one.  No thank you!

Brian tried to call me a "Party Pooper" at that point and I absolutely put my foot down at that.  I brought my almost 9 month old baby out in a hailstorm.  I am anything but a "Party Pooper."

What a view though!  Aufwiedersehen!