Tuesday, April 30, 2024
This morning was pretty good. Everyone did a decent job packing up, and right around 7am we were out the door. I’m so proud of the kids. They have been up at 6am basically every day since March 31. Everyone is tired, but they are doing such a good job. I couldn’t be prouder of them.
The weather for much of the over 27 km (17+ miles) was really good, but towards the end it really cooled off and the rain that we have successfully avoided for a month finally caught up to us. When we got into Astorga it was really coming down. Everyone ended up pretty wet, but we got to our albergue and dried off and had warm showers and now everyone is tucked in and sleeping.
Astorga is a really beautiful little town with a cathedral and a little palace designed by the great Antoni Gaudí. I went out this evening and got a few pictures. The light was tough because the palace was backlit by the sunset. But hopefully some of the pics I took will turn out.
River was fun today. Imagine having a smart and sometimes sassy four-year-old sitting right in your ear for 5-9 hours every day. That’s been my life for the past month.
For a while (weeks) all she wanted to talk about was Christmas. Finally today I put my foot down and told her I wasn’t going to talk about Christmas anymore. So then she started imagining things. She was an ice princess and she was creating an ice path for us to slide along. Then she told me she had a watch like mine that would tell her how far we had walked. Then she was playing games on her “watch” and she was watching movies. At one point she told me she was going to put in “headphones” so she could watch a movie on her watch. Then I had quiet for a few minutes.
She also did some good walking (jogging) for about 35-40 minutes. It was a good rest for my back and shoulders.
All in all, it was a pretty good day.
Tomorrow we leave the meseta behind and we begin making our way into the mountains. We’ve got some tough days ahead. We are tired. We have come so far. And we are ready to take on the next stage.