Delphi Day 2: "Anne's directions are shit" - Finn, age 7

So the next morning we wake up bright and early, go eat a delicious breakfast of Greek yogurt, honey, and chocolate chip bread and then get ready to go look at the museum and upper part of the archaeological site.  Now one would think that before bringing 30 students plus the faculty director and her family one would check to make sure the museum was actually open, right?  Well Anne must have chewed some laurel leaves that morning because we got to the museum and there was this big sign that said "CLOSED ON 14 NOVEMBER". Sweet.  Of course, Anne being Anne didn't apologize and tried to pass the blame off on someone else.

So we had a whole day in Delphi with nothing scheduled.  So while Anne was talking to us a bit about the geology of the region, she pointed out this really pointy, steep mountain where, if you were convicted of the worst kind of heresy, you would be marched up there and thrown off.  Anne also said that there was a little path that led up said mountain.  So we decided to hike it.  Good thing I brought shorts, because by 10:30 am it was already pushing 70.  Jealous homies in MN?!?! ;)

So here were the directions Anne gave us to get to the trail.  "Walk into town and find a church.  Then go behind the church and crawl up about 30 meters.  Then find the path.  Once you're at the place with water at the top, find a barbed wire fence, find where it was broken [Anne did this personally herself] and cross it.  Then walk until you see around the mountains."  This prompted Elaine's 7 year old son to proclaim to his Dad, "Anne's directions are shit!"  All Dad said, was "that word's not appropriate" in the most "yup, you're right, but I'm still trying to parent you so I really should correct your language" kind of voice.  The little dudes didn't end up hiking, but the rest of us started off.

I need to run more.  End of story.  I was as red as a strawberry 10 steps in.  But, I didn't let it beat me and kept going, stopping quite a bit to take pictures because the ground was too uneven to look around while you were hiking.  This trail had SO many switchbacks!  You'd think that you were making pretty good progress, but then you'd look down the hill and see that actually you'd only gained about 10 feet in elevation.  So frustrating, it was like the song that never ends in trail form.  Me, Mark and Brittany were lolly-gagging behind all the other people who were trying to go Steve-pace, aka warp speed, so we assumed we'd never catch them, but then we turned the corner and guess what?  The group was all exhausted from trying to be macho and fast that they had to sit down for half an hour to rest.  Slow and steady my friends, slow and steady.

So we had no idea what Anne meant by the place with the water, so we just kept following the trail marked by black and yellow lines.  Eventually we ended up coming across this abandoned goat farm.  And then Kelsey started seeing a bunch of shotgun shells all over the ground.  This prompted the second best quote of the weekend, "I've seen enough Lifetime movies to know that this doesn't end well."  We were all a little unnerved by this, but then, while we were standing by the goat farm, we saw this guy with runs strapped to his back walking around the hills!

We were all freaking out.  And then the guy started walking towards us, ahhhh! Turns out he was just hunting for some birds and sent us on our way.  We were about to head down the mountain when I thought I might have spotted the mythical barbed wire fence.  So we all started running toward it.  Turns out it was just a pen for some more goats.  BUT it did lead us to these really cool rocks where we could climb out and look over the whole of the mountain and the sea.  It was an amazing view.  Everything looked so big, but it wasn't overwhelming.  More like we were alone in a big back yard.  

After taking the opportunity to take some good pictures and just sit there and look a while, we made our way down the mountain.  While the way up was a pain because of endurance, the way down was not so friendly to my knee joints.  Too many uneven rocks.  So by the time we got down, we were all hurting pups.  We spent a while sitting in town before we had to catch our bus.  A couple of the guys had gotten lost on the way down and were late getting on the bus.  Anne took this opportunity to chew them out over the loudspeaker for being tardy.  She then turned around and was 30 minutes late getting on the bus after lunch...

I fell asleep on the way back and good thing because that bus smelled sooooo bad backed with 30 sweaty, dirty, hikers.  Even Talulah refused to sit in the back with us because it was so stinky.  A shower was in order when I got back to my apartment and I couldn't even wait long enough for the hot water heater to do its magic before hopping in.