Saturday, October 13, 2007

Stage 82 -- Chalet de la Maline to Moustiers-Sainte-Marie

<reminder: photos now available at:
http://www.flickr.com/search/groups/?q=h2h&m=names
>

Friday, Oct 12th, 2007

It took us 2 days to get to the mountains, and 80 to hike through them. Today we finally came down out of them for good. Oh, there are still some hills to be crossed ahead of us -- the Luberon and the Alpilles -- but both are separate from the Alps through which we have been hiking for so long.

The feeling when we came up to the top of that last ridge and saw ahead of us the flat Plateau de Valensoie stretching out into the hazy distance of an autumn afternoon was for me much more satisfying than seeing the sea from the heights above Monaco. Then I knew that we still had a significant amount of tough hiking to do. Now all we have ahead of us are gravy days, or at least that's the way it seems.

Today is also significant for two other reasons: we only have 10 stages left until the end of the hike, and today is the last day the three of us will hike alone, since our father will join us tomorrow for the rest of the way