Saturday smiles: short and sweet edition

This week’s highlights:

Phil and I spent two nights in this rustic cabin in Cowan’s Gap State Park. It was a birthday/Mother’s Day/graduation/anniversary getaway trip. And it was perfect.

We hiked.

You might be able to smell the sweat. In this picture we had just climbed a trail marked “very steep.” Note to self: “very steep” in Illinois is not the same as “very steep” in Pennsylvania.

We encountered nature.

Cute, right? It might be poisonous, but the first one of these I saw, I thought it was a toy a kid had left on the trail. Then it moved.

Yep, I need to  be in nature  more often.

The snakes, however, I had no problem believing were real. I love seeing my husband watch creatures we don’t usually see. He thought the snakes were cool and wanted to observe. I wanted to tiptoe around and keep making progress on the trail.

None of this back-to-nature experience would have been possible without grandparents to watch the grandkids, so that is a MAJOR smile-maker this week.

And mountain views. Oh man, did we have mountain views.

I can live the rest of the week — maybe even the month — on this.

What are you smiling about this week?