Back at last from Arizona. We had a good trip for the most part, with only one Melancholy Situation (more on that later). We drove on Sunday until late afternoon, letting the girls out to potty & stretch as necessary, and ended up just outside the Arizona border when we decided to stop. Stayed at a nice campsite for the night, and there was enough daylight left after we arrived to let (or should I say make?) the dogs go for a bit of a swim in the river.
Monday morning back on the road, and arrived at the campsite at about 11:00 (a full three hours
before check-in!) We weren't sure we were at the right place, because it turned out not to be an actual campground, but rather a cabin used by the NPS folk which is rented out when they are not using it. Totally sweet--a two-bedroom cabin with full kitchen surrounded by acres of meadow for the dogs to run around. The picture to the left was taken on one of our walks. The little building to the left is where the well was located; the cabin is just right of the picture's center, and our trailer is just to the right of that.Wes, Andrea & the kids showed up a couple hours later. Ralph & I had driven into Williams to get some groceries and they were there when we returned. Went for a short hike, and afterwards Andrea made a fish dinner. Had a nice evening chatting.
On Tuesday, we went to the Deer Park just outside of Williams. Here's a shot of Quartz feeding the deer. They had lots of other animals too, including miniature donkeys, a camel, some peacocks (including a partial-albino one and a full albino one), a wallaby, llamas, miniature horses, dwarf zebu, reindeer, and a cockatoo. They also had a pet hedgehog named Sonic, who was just darling. We spent about two hours there total.
Yesterday on the way home is when we had our Melancholy Situation. We had stopped by the side of the road to take some pictures of saguaro cacti. Even as we were doing so, I was thinking t
his probably wasn't the smartest thing for us to do as we were NOT adequately prepared: wearing shorts & sandals instead of long pants and rugged shoes, had the dogs with us, etc. I got a good "bite" from a plant that you couldn't even see the thorns on unless you looked really carefully (see photo, left; the twiggy-branch next to my leg is what got me and yes, that's blood on my knee), and Ralph took a hit just above his right heel. Zoe had two clumps of cacti stuck in her hair and a few spines in her flesh which took a bit of work to get out. But poor Hali had the worst of it--a piece of dried cactus about 2" long got stuck in her face, pinning her ear forward next to her eye. We thought one of the spines had actually gone into her eye, but fortunately it was just pinned by her 
clenched lids. Despite our efforts to stop her, she managed to paw at it several times & of course got spines in her foot too. It took about 30 minutes with a pair of needlenose pliers to get all the spines out, and she was screaming & crying the whole time. Fortunately she doesn't seem to have any aftereffects--no swelling, no reddening of the eye, no pain as far as we can tell. Ralph took a couple pictures but I'm not going to post them.Anyway, I'm pretty beat. I'll post more tomorrow.
You just couldn't wait to post the "sexy leg shot", could you!
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