anna and i love to go on little side tent camping adventures. so, when we were able to figure out a two day trip to santa cruz island, we were super excited. but, we knew it would require a bit more preparation and planning and gear and such. armed with our brand new backpacking packs, […]
hiking
wilderness lakes stuff.
i’m way way behind in blogging, but we haven’t had very good internet lately. so, to kick things off, i’m taking us way back, three campgrounds ago… after our time in palm desert, we spent a week in menifee, california at wilderness lakes. (we stayed there for a few days just before christmas last year). […]
mastodon peak hike.joshua tree national park.
even though palm desert is just south of joshua tree national park, it’s still a good 35 minutes or so to get to the south entrance of the park and a bit further just to get to a few of the maintained trails in the less populated area of the park. the north entrance is […]
THE grand canyon.
we were SUPPOSED to go to the grand canyon for a week after our time in zion in november. but some camper repairs came up and it was a long detour on our way to vegas, where we were meeting family, so we skipped it. then, when we started making our arizona plans for the […]
chiricahua national monument
our campsite in benson is an hour or so from four different national monuments/historic sites. since derek was off for martin luther king jr day, we decided to hit up chiricahua national monument to do a bit of hiking and exploring. the place was pretty amazing. a hidden gem of arizona. we took a short […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
zion national park.kolob canyon and canyon overlook.
we had two weeks in zion, giving derek a full weekend to explore with us. unfortunately, he wasn’t feeling great, and i was still a little sore from my angel’s landing hike, so we kept it very low-key. first up, on saturday, we drove out to kolob canyon, which is a way different part of […]
zion national park.the narrows, done right.
after our little (and underprepared) adventure into the narrows on our first day at zion, we decided that at least some of us would be returning to do a proper hike into the legendary canyon. after much deliberation and weather studying, we decided that anna and i would do it one day and then report […]