I’m back in Uppsala after two back-to-back road trips - one to Jönköping, and another to Tiveden followed by some Dalarna exploration. I doodled on my reMarkable tablet through the trip, and figured I’d break this post up with my unfinished sketches.

The drive to Jönköping was rainy, and I doodled this dragon on the way. I didn’t realize I’d appreciate the reMarkable as much as I do. This was the first trip I can remember where I did not take my laptop. If I got inspired to write or draw, I could do it all on the tablet - no other gadgets required.

Jönköping was for a half Iron Man race, with me as ‘support’ in the form of cheering (and chilling in a cafe between stages ;)). Seeing all those people put themselves through that, and P’s perseverance during all the stages, did not make me want to do a half Iron Man, but it did inspire me to try running more again.

The night after the race, on another leg of the trip, I took a picture of a beautiful sunset with a wind turbine on the horizon. I tried to draw it later.

Then it was a couple of days back in Uppsala before the next trip - to Tiveden!

We hiked for a day and camped overnight. The next day we had an excellent guided tour along one of the shorter routes and learned all about the plants and history of Tiveden (along with some folk tales!)

The rest of the trip was filled with talking, eating, visiting a really cool regiment, cycling along Lake Siljan, and seeing a wonderful spelman concert in Dala-Floda.

It’s been a great first half of summer vacation, and it was also nice to be home again and do some cooking (zucchini fritters… they were gone before I remembered to take a picture of the final product):

And of course, there’s cuddling with the cats.

Now, all fired up for running, I’ve signed up for Train as One and did my first 5km run on Strava yesterday. I’m thinking about signing up for a 6km race in September, but will see how it goes - don’t want to get ahead of myself too much just yet.