Day 194: Pino Trail

Yesterday, we went on our first really long hike in ages. Somehow, the National Parks just don't seem to lend themselves to hikes of the right length.  I need the right amount of distance and/or climbing and natural beauty, otherwise nothing at all happens with my endorphin levels.  Yesterday, I did just fine on endorphins, and today I am completely dead, aching all over, and needing an afternoon nap.  Antonia fell asleep as soon as we got back in the house, then woke me up at 3am claiming she couldn't sleep and hadn't had dinner, etc...  Oh well!

First things first, yesterday was also a good day for adrenaline, because it is the day Antonia actually spotted a wild bear.  As everyone knows by now, it's always Antonia...  She said it was about 20 metres off the path, and that it looked towards us, then scrambled off into the woods.  Apparently, it had big claws, brown fur, and would have been one and a half times the size of Mike if it stood up.  She was incredibly excited, well she described herself as 'alarmed', which is very Antonia as vocabulary goes.  I was alarmed too, and encouraged her to keep talking at the top of her voice all the way back to the car park.  I was glad that a) she saw this bear towards the end of our walk and b) she saw it before it started to get really dark as it was when we got back to the car.

Apart from that the hike was fantastic, very, very beautiful and surprisingly autumnal.  The higher up the mountain we got the more trees there were changing colour.  We were climbing up over Albuquerque, with a kind of telepherique way off to one side, and an immense view in both directions once we got to the crest.  So although it looks nothing like Grenoble, it's the same general layout.