126 days until Christmas

We are back from Arizona! It was a pretty good trip all in all, although I would have preferred a smaller group. As it was there were six adults, three children (all under the age of 5) and four dogs. The trailer had a blowout in Victorville resulting in a tow & spending the night in the parking lot of Pep Boys, but the workers fixed the tire within an hour of the shop opening so it really wasn't that big a deal. We'd have been stopping to sleep along the way anyhow, so we just did it a little sooner than planned. Here are some pics from the trip & a bit about each of them:


A grackle on the shore of the Colorado River. This was taken at Moabi Park, a hot but pleasant campground with plenty of places where we could take the girls into the water. This is just before you cross into Arizona.


A fish in the Colorado River. Don't know what kind it was, but there were a lot of them. We saw one really big fish--over a foot long, I would guesstimate--although of course I didn't have the camera handy when that one swam by.


Our trailer was visited by California Quail in the evening at Moabi Park. I took several pictures & this is the best of them. They were skittish so I couldn't open the screen door for a good shot. They make such interesting twittering noises.


Here's a visitor we had inside the trailer--a hummingbird that flew right in the open doorway & buzzed around the window for a while. He kinda got panicky in the curtains so I went up & gently guided him away from the window. He flew out as soon as he saw the open door. This was at our camp in Williams.



Mesa in the Mojave Desert. I took this one while we waited for the overheating engine to cool down a bit on the drive home. When we stopped it was 118 outside, although at one point it was so hot that the thermometer wasn't able to register it. We pulled off the road then, too, in order to wet the dogs down. We stopped again a couple hours after leaving Mojave, thinking to spend the night in Ludlow but it was too hot to sleep and we hit the road again around 12:30 in the morning (and it was still 104 degrees outside!), then stopped in Barstow to sleep at about 1:30. Much cooler there, only about 85.



Looking across one of the ponds near where we stayed in Williams. This one was the biggest one within walking distance. The dogs loved going into the water; at least, Sadie loved it, Hali enjoyed it, and Zoe tolerated it when she got too hot. Lots of swallows, dragonflies, water beetles, and damselflies. We even saw one itty bitty frog, although of course we didn't have the camera with us that time. There was another smaller pond very close to camp, and that pond had salamanders in it (Ralph called them mud puppies). Too much reflection for me to get a picture, though. If you click on the picture to view it large, you can see some small, dark objects near the water & one in the sky. These are swallows swooping after insects.



Sadie in the big pond. This trip was the first time she has ever been on any kind of trip as far as we know, and we were pleased with how well she behaved off-leash. It was wonderful to see her enjoying herself in the water and running in the meadows.



Ralph & QL outside the entrance to Lava River Cave. Standing in front of it was like standing in a hot room with the refrigerator door open; it's about 32 degrees inside & the cold air just flowed out. Felt really good!



The sign telling about Lava River Cave. If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you'll see a bit that says "entrance" and then a wee bit past that an arrow marking the coldest point of the cave. That's *almost* how far into it I got before I looked back, saw total darkness, and had a fit of claustrophobia. I tell you, I scrambled out of there a lot faster than I went in! The boys all went in a ways more although I'm not sure how far they got. Ralph wants to go back & explore it all the way to the end next time.



Our camp area. Ralph, the dogs & I stayed in the trailer; WL, AL, and the three kids stayed in the cabin, and BL & GS stayed in BL's camper-van. You can see how wide open the place is; there are a few barbed wire fences to control deer (we saw a herd of them the first morning, but they were too far away & moving around too much for me to get anything other than blurry shots) but for the most part it's just miles of meadow & forest. Lots of chipmunks around much to Zoe's delight (as if she had the slightest chance of actually catching one!).



Some campers before us had made bird feeders out of pine cones, peanut butter & bird seed. The chickadees really enjoyed them. This particular feeder was right outside our trailer door. We re-peanut buttered them before we left.