Little trolls found the cache at Hidden Cove! We had the trails to ourselves today - completely and utterly alone out there. No dogs charging us, no chatting moms, no running of the bulls (ooops, I mean boys)...Ben said on our way back to the truck as we talked about hearing only the pitter patter of rain "It's peaceful in here."

I don’t want to forget something Sam said last week on a hike with a friend of ours. She was talking about her son leading a bike trip for teens down the state of VT. We guessed it was 300 miles long top to bottom, and he had 15 days to make the trip. How many miles would they do a day?, she asked. Sam was quiet for quite some time. She started with 15 times 2 is 30…Sam was still quiet. Finally he came up with an answer (I don’t remember what it was, but it was a bit off, so we started working through  how he got it – the process was so interesting). I think he started with figuring out how many 15s there are in 90 (6); then how many 90s in 300 (trying to get close to 300) – 3 and a third he said. So he’s at 270 with 3 90s; and 6 15s in each 90. That leaves 30 miles to spread across 15 days – 2 each day. So if there are 6 15s in each 90, and three sets of 90, then 6×3=18 plus those extra 2 miles each day is 20 miles a day. I was sick that week, so it literally took me the entire drive home to figure out what he had done. Last night I remembered it, and wanted to write it down, so this morning I tried to recreate it using the pieces I remembered (6, 90 and 3 1/3) but couldn’t. So I just woke Sam up and had him help me. My goodness his head works in interesting ways. He juggles a lot of pieces when he problem solves. He really pictures the parts moving around in a way I don’t naturally do.