on thursday, the kids and i loaded up and headed off to check out tumacácori national historical park. (pronounced too-mah-KAH-kohr-ee, we would learn). basically, it’s the ruins of an old spanish mission, a few miles north of the mexican border, and it was chock full of information about the history of when catholic european explorers […]
dining
mesa miscellany. (plus some yuma).

when we parted ways with the grandlidboms, they headed back to nc, and we made our way to arizona. our first stop was in yuma, just across the border. we had a quick little stay in the front yard of a random strangers house, who we found via boondockerswelcome.com. (basically, it’s a subscription service that […]
grandlidbom san diego christmas, days 2 & 3.

after our action packed first day with the grandlidboms, the lidkids spent the night with them, and since we didn’t have anything planned until lunchtime on day two, our morning at the camper was lazy and glorious. i savored a delicious cup of coffee outside by the lake, with no bickering, whining or cartoon sounds […]
grandlidbom san diego christmas, day 1.

finally. the day was here. the grandlidboms arrived in san diego. we woke up, ate a quick breakfast, and then headed out the door to meet them at the birch aquarium. we had our happy greetings and then started exploring… while the whole place was pretty educational, the first bit that we walked around in […]
san diego, pre-grandlidbom christmas visit.

after our little stay in menifee, we moved on to san diego, where we would be meeting derek’s parents for an epic christmas extravaganza. but, first, we had a few days to settle in before they would arrive. once we were all set up and good to go at our site, we headed off to […]
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 […]
capitol reef week stuff.

ok. so i’ve blogged about our three capitol reef adventures. now comes the post about all of our downtime and boring stuff while at capitol reef. we rolled into town late friday night. we didn’t have any groceries, so as soon as we were set up at our campsite, we went back for dinner at […]
general moab miscellaneousness, part 2.

yesterday, we departed from moab (to a cozy new campground with full hookups and fast internet AND cable). but, i will now reflect on the random miscellaneous memories of the second two weeks of our time in moab. before we left our actual campground campsite, i made everyone take one last bath/shower. then the girls, […]
moab adventures with friends.

in the grand tetons we met a new fun family and we made fast friends. we realized we were scheduled to be at glacier at the same time a few weeks later. then we went our separate ways for a bit, but last sunday, they rolled in (like a BUNCH of hours out of their […]
a very educational salt lake city day.

on our first visit to salt lake city a few month ago, derek was out of town for the week, and we were a good 50 minutes away from anything cool in the city. this time around, i had a long list of things i wanted to check out. first on the list, was a […]