our annual gingerbread decorating, coincided with hazel’s birthday, at her request. for the second year on the road, we picked up a set of four mini gingerbread houses, due to space considerations, and much to the dismay of the lidkids. and then, we loaded up arthur christmas and not a charlie brown christmas, much to […]
anna
joshua tree.keys view. cap rock.

for our final adventure in joshua tree, we waited for derek to finish work at 2pm (hooray for an east coast job) and headed off to the keys view. from the viewpoint, you can see down into the coachella valley, salton sea and the san andreas fault, although we didn’t know what we were looking […]
joshua tree.hidden valley, cholla cactus garden, cottonwood springs.

for our first joshua tree big adventure, i dragged the kids out for a short hike in hidden valley. i think technically it was a “nature walk”, but it had some good spots to climb and explore, so we’ll call it a hike. first photo shoot with an actual joshua tree. they really are so […]
joshua tree.indian cove campground, junior rangers.

as soon as we got our camper back, we packed up and get the heck out of las vegas and made our way straight into joshua tree national park. it was dark by the time we arrived, so we didn’t get a good indication of our view, but when the morning rolled around, indian cove […]
seven magic mountains

derek had to work on black friday, so i dragged the kids out of town, to check out “seven magic mountains”. basically, it’s an art installation, comprised of giant stacked and painted rocks, just south of vegas. it’s pretty cool to see it pop up in the middle of an otherwise drab desert landscape. as […]
the hoover dam

for our final field trip with my parents, we went to the hoover dam. we had learned a bit about it at the springs preserve, but we were excited to check the place out up close and in person. firstly, there were WAAAAAAY more people there than i ever would have imagined. we tried to […]
escape to red rock canyon

at this point, i don’t think it’s a secret that i’m not a fan of las vegas, so i was pretty glad to venture out of the city with my mom, to do a bit of hiking and exploring in the red rock canyon. the ride there was mostly standard desert colors, but as soon […]
not really all the fabulous, las vegas.

well. it’s been awhile. so much to catch up on. we rolled into 22 days ago. we stayed in a hotel for the first few days, while our camper was looked at for possible water damage. then we were back in the camper for a week, while we worked out the details with insurance and […]
real bodies at bally’s.

derek planned several big adventures for our vegas time, specifically while my parents were in town. our first, and the most anticipated by anna and my mom, was the real bodies exhibit at bally’s. it’s basically a bunch of real actual bodies and organs and parts, cut up and displayed in random and interesting and […]
valley of fire state park.

well, we had big plans to go to page, arizona and then the grand canyon, before meeting my parent in vegas in a few days. but, we have some camper issues that we need to get looked at (specifically, some water damage in the floor), so take a more direct route to vegas, to get […]