during our time in mesa, we were able to hit up two different national monuments, both about an hour or so away, and both dedicated to preserving the history of native people who inhabited the area long before we did. first up, casa grande. the big house. the kids insisted on doing as much of […]
national parks
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 […]
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 […]
some zion-y stuff.
zion national park was our last stop on our two month long tour of utah (and one colorado) national parks. it was definitely my favorite, but i think we were sort of worn out by the time we got here and our motivation to get out and explore seemed to be at an all time […]
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 […]
zion national park.angel’s landing.
as soon as we knew we were coming to zion, i started contemplating one of the park’s most epic hikes. i had seen so many pictures and heard tales of folks who had successfully hiked angel’s landing (and those who had turned back), and i KNEW that i would regret not giving it a try […]
zion national park.the narrows.
if we only did one thing at zion national park, we knew it was going to be the narrows trail. it’s basically a hike into a canyon, where there’s a river, which can vary in depth, width, and flow, but the hike is mostly in the water. since it’s october, the temps of the water […]