We didn’t buy any fat pigs, but if Lydia had had her way we’d have come home with a baby goat or two. We just got home from spending two days in Lycksele, a town about two-and-a-half hours’ southwest of here. The highlight of the trip was a visit to Lycksele Djurpark, a Nordic zoo/amusement park. Lydia could have done without the moose and the reindeer, I think, but she liked seeing the the brown bears, the musk oxen, and the bison. Her favorites, though, were the foxes and the goats. Just before we left the zoo at the end of the afternoon, she and I spent ten or fifteen minutes in the petting zoo chatting up the goats and she was mightily disappointed when she realized that we couldn’t take one home with us. I think she thought we were shopping for a new pet.
I’d love to have a goat actually, but I have no idea what the zoning laws for livestock are here and–an even bigger problem–Olof is staunchly against getting any more pets. Even the suggestion of getting a guinea pig for Lydia’s birthday was met with firm resistance, so I don’t think a goat is in the works in the near future, sad to say.
The first night we spent in Lycksele we had a cabin at one of the local campgrounds and as soon as we walked in the door all of us were wishing we had booked more than one night there. It was a four-person cabin with a living room/dining room, a kitchen, a full bathroom, and two sets of bunkbeds in a separate bedroom. We even had a TV, a semi-private porch, and our own parking space. Now that’s what I call camping!
In my own defense, I do have to say that I’m not a total tenderfoot. I’ve done my fair share of roughing it. When I was a kid my mom used to take the five of us kids (me, my two younger brothers, and my two cousins who lived with us) camping in the mountains pretty regularly in the summers. And when I say “camping,” I mean CAMPING. We’re talking the sleeping-bags-under-the-stars, baths-in-the-creek, not-even-an-outhouse-let-alone-a-bathroom kind of camping. I loved it then, but I just don’t think I’m up for it now. I’m far too fond of running water these days to give it up without a fight.