[First of all, I apologize for the wacky formatting of the images. Despite my efforts to format them in the editor, they won't obey. And I give up.]

We just got back from a week long road trip to the Badlands and Black Hills in South Dakota. After 10 hours in the car, craving exercise—and getting it—was blessedly easy. On the days it was freaking hot (I knew pregnancy and heat didn’t mix, but OH MY GOD) we went caving. A nice hike in a cook 57 degree underground, ahhhhhhh. We spent the cooler days hiking in the hills.

It thunder storms nearly daily in the Black Hills, which was a good thing for the temperature. One afternoon we did a 7 mile hike with 1,000 feet elevation leap. Some women do the iron man while they’re practically in labor, so I realize I don’t deserve a gold medal. But at 5 months pregnant felt like I’d accomplished something by the end, perhaps worthy of a small prize–a loaded Pez-dispenser, maybe a high five. Especially considering that as soon as we reached a significant distance from shelter or civilization, it started to hail and hailed for an hour.

Finding decent food in the middle of the western plains is a different story. Until we reached Custer, most food was deep fried or unidentifiable. I actually spit out bite of what was supposed to be a hamburger but had a disturbing stretchy/gristly texture of something like the knee-joint of road kill, perhaps sun-baked raccoon. By the third day I was aching for something green, some nutrients, maybe a handful of dirt. I ordered a salad at a lovely steak house, and got a wedge of iceburg slathered in ranch (though I will say that the steak there was VERY good). Not quite what I was after, but at least it reminded me of a less than classy joke my Portland friends used to tease me with, as their friend raised in the rural Midwest. (How do you get a bj from a Midwestern girl? Dip it in ranch.) 

Home now in Minneapolis, we picked up our CSA veggies yesterday. And oh, heaven. I’m in the middle of devouring this salad made of stuff grown with love from a farm about a half hour out of the city: Spinach, kale, fresh peach, roasted walnuts and yellow baby tomatoes that are sweeter than I ever knew a tomato could taste. Glory, glory, glory.

And, for those of you who read my previous posts, we had two ultrasounds. One was a follow up to the first because they found a little spot on the heart they wanted to check out. I’m happy to report that after two full inspections, the baby is quite healthy and (drum roll) a GIRL! Hooray.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 14th, 2009 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Blogs, Stretch Pants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.