The devil's molar.

The molar.

On the other side of town there stands a mountain, capped with an interesting configuration of rock, that from many angles looks like a molar.  Why someone decided it should be named after the devil is beyond me.  But, we can see this impressive mountain from our house and Natty often asks if we can go climb it.  Scotty and I have done the hike before and it does have pretty spectacular views of the city from the top.  Today, after waffles, I was looking out the window and the molar was peeking out from between two cloud layers and calling to me.  I said, "Let's go climb devil's molar!" and just like that, we were out the door.  You can start from the bottom of the mountain and walk your way up, but that takes several hours.  We chose to drive most of the way up, got stuck in a bit of mud, and then decided to stop there and walk the rest.  It was a bit hairy on the narrow, winding road up with the car wanting to fish tail back and forth.  Lucky for me, I'm married to an expert muddy road driver and he had us safely up in no time.  Natty loved the hunt for mushrooms while Jubilee declared the mud to be "eeew!" a few hundred times before getting distracted by other things.  Both girls did amazingly well and when we managed to get up to the rock part, which actually is a bit of a tricky climb, Natty was quite the trooper.  She gripped the rocky walls and kept moving forward, even when she was afraid of slipping and falling.  With a light drizzle and lots of slippery stones, rainy season might not have been the best choice, but the mist covering the fields and the clouds hovering above the city made a dramatic sight.

Looks pretty dangerous, right? :)

We didn't expect to get to the top, but we did!  I was so proud of Natty (Scotty carried Jubilee all the way up) and we made sure to heap on the affirmations and share plenty of high-fives.  Natty tends to be a bit afraid of even the slightest challenges, so when she puts her all into something and doesn't wuss out- I'm pretty happy about that.  We felt like an adventurous family today and loved having something so fun and beautiful so close by!

Conquered!