Mark & I thought our lives weren't difficult enough lately, so we loaded up the minivan on Saturday and drove southwest to do some camping in Arizona. It was a fun trip, but camping with two small boys, an archaic dog and a giant, rambunctious puppy involves a serious amount of work. Overall though, we think it was worth it.
We spent the first night at the Dead Horse Ranch State Park in Cottonwood. We had the area almost to ourselves and had a great night, even though it was very windy and rained a little bit.
Silas decided on this trip that he is in charge of any and all campfires from now on.
On Sunday, we continued south to Tucson, where we camped at Catalina State Park. My sister Karen and niece Jenny drove down and spent the afternoon with us, which was a lot of fun. We visited Saguaro National Park together, an incredibly beautiful place.
Having Silas and Levi running around among so many cacti, along with the park warnings about poisonous snakes, spiders, insects and killer bees, made me a little nervous, but we all came out unscathed, except for Mark - he sat on a prickly pear cactus while trying to take a picture. He was OK as soon as he removed all the spines.
Mark celebrated my birthday on Monday by buying himself me a humongous diesel truck. Actually, I am excited about it too, we're going convert it to run it on veggie oil and use it to pull our Airstream trailer - this may be our last camping trip in a tent for a long while!
Another highlight of our vacation was a visit to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, a fantastic place. We all had a great time in Tucson, but probably did too much in too few days, because we are all exhausted now. But, we hope to return again someday when, as Silas says, it isn't "so scorching hot out", perhaps next January.
View at the desert museum:
Silas digging fossils from the sand at the desert museum:
Levi takes a rest in a high traffic area:
