after our long stretch in southern arizona, we moved a little bit north, to cottonwood, giving us plenty of options for new places to explore. within a half an hour, there were two national monuments (tuzigoot and montezuma castle), both of them preserving the ruins of communities of native folks who once called the verde […]
unschool
ajo, arizona.
after our camping trip to organ pipe cactus national monument, i was super excited to stop and visit the tiny little town of ajo, arizona, on our way to the next campground. i had read a bit about the politics and economy of the area, but i was most looking forward to all of the […]
valley vista rv resortbenson, arizona.
after our stay in an unofficial 55+ community in mesa and hearing about how arizona is just chock full of snowbirds in the winter, i wasn’t super excited to head to benson, arizona. i was expected all the retirees to be grumpy about kids being in “their” park, and benson isn’t near a whole lot […]
fort bowie national monument misadventures.
on the day we went to chiricahua, we had high hopes of maybe swinging by fort bowie national monument, which is in the same neck of the woods. but, we had read that the hike just to get to the visitor center was three miles, round trip. we hiked enough at chiricahua that we were […]
tumacácori national historical park.
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 […]
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 […]
saguaro national park
since arriving in the sonoran desert, we have been enamored with the giant saguaro cactus and couldn’t wait to visit the national park dedicated to the iconic giant. our spot in tucson was only about 30 minutes away from the west side of the park, so we were able to visit twice in our four […]
tucson (museum) time.
after we left mesa, we moved on down the road a bit to tucson, where we stayed in the driveway of a boondockers welcome member (in the middle of the desert) for a few days. there was so much to do in tucson, it was hard to narrow it down, but in the end, we […]
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 […]
phoenix zoo.tiger do over.
if you actually read my blog posts, you may remember that i mentioned that, on our san diego zoo adventure, anna was bummed that we never made it to the tiger exhibit. so, we promised to take her to the next zoo that had tigers that we came across in our travels. well, she didn’t […]