Lorelei is off to camp with her classmates this morning.  They will be spending three days at Camp Wesley Woods, about an hour from home.
This of course necessitated a lot of shopping.  And with one thing and another, I put off this shopping until yesterday.  Yesterday evening, to be exact.  Because it was my birthday, and Walmart was really not high on my list of places to spend it.
And turns out I overestimated Walmart, or at least its shoe department.  Because Lorelei wanted rain boots–insisted, in fact, that she was SUPPOSED to have rain boots (and she can get very obsessive about such things)–and the only rain boots at Walmart were in toddler sizes.
What the packing list really said she was required to have was “hiking boots or shoes” and “tennis shoes for creek walking.” (Or maybe it said sneakers for creek walking, but same thing.)
We decided that her school sneakers, which she only wears a couple of days a week and which are close to worn out anyway, could be used for creek walking.  But Walmart was also devoid of hiking boots or shoes.  And Payless (and all other shoe stores) were closed (it was Sunday) before we figured this out.  So Target was our only hope.
You see the results of the Target trip above.  I sure hope that’s close enough to be considered hiking shoes, because they were all that came close, and we had a choice between a size 2 and a size 6 (I think 5 would have been the best choice).  And Lorelei was not happy because they are BOY shoes.
I don’t usually get worked up about this kind of thing, being pretty traditional when it comes to gender roles and stereotypes, but I got irritated this morning when Lorelei and I were talking about her shoes.  Because there were no hiking shoes for little girls.  All the little girl shoes were pink or purple or rainbow or glittery.  The only boots in sight were strictly for fashion.  And I understand that little girls like pink and purple and glittery shoes, because Lorelei likes them too.  But there weren’t even pink glittery hiking shoes.   It was as if the people who make little girl shoes don’t think little girls might ever need serious shoes to do important things in. (Yes, I know they make little girl hiking shoes.  I know I could have ordered them from Lands End–which is where I got mine–or somewhere similar.  But most people shop at Walmart and Target and can’t afford to buy expensive hiking shoes for fast-growing kids, so why should a variety of shoes be available there as well?)