"It was a wonderful adventure..."

One day while we were in Salekhard and Andrew was free, he verbalized what I had been thinking. 

"I wonder if we can walk to the river from here?"

We could see the Ob River, we had driven to it and it isn't far from the house. Bravely, he, Abigail, Selah, Bre, Deborah and I began a quest. We walked to the end of the road, through the forest, across a sandy road, into some more woods and ended up in an open area-I would say meadow, but that mental picture for Americans is not what we saw in Salekhard. We didn't make it to the river for a few reasons: the closer we got, the spongier the ground became; the further we got from home, the less brave Abigail became; even cutting through the woods, the river was farther than we thought. 

Andrew and Selah, in the lead,
the first forest.

Bre and Abigail

the birch trees, just beginning to leaf out

stop and take time to play in the sand

Andrew, Selah, Bre, Abigail, Deborah as we entered the second forest.

part of the plant life in the "meadow"

on the road home,
Selah can't pass up a perfectly good puddle

Andrew,Bre, Abigail far ahead
me and Selah, taking our time

Right before this picture was taken
Selah had looked up at Deborah and said,
"Mama, this was a wonderful adventure."

That pretty much wraps up how I would describe our trip.

From beginning to end, and everything in between, 

it was a wonderful adventure.

 Sunset from Deborah's kitchen door.
Those are the Yural Mountains, and the Ob River is below them,
reflecting the sunset.
It was never as dark as it looks in this photo,
but the only way to capture even a fraction of the beauty of the sunset
was to adjust the lighting below it. May 31, 10:34 PM