Snapshots: Arizona Part Two

Picking up where I left off . . .

We spent almost all our time visiting the various family members in Tucson, but we did make one visit to Agua Caliente park. Despite living in Tucson for several years, I had never been there. It really was pretty impressive. 

Some of the many palm trees were date palms, and we could see the dates forming at the top, which was cool.

Also, ducks and turtles in the pond, both of which were clearly accustomed to being fed and swam right up to the children. There must've been a dozen turtles no more than ten feet from them. The children were very pleased with this.

When we left Tucson, we went up to Phoenix to stay a night with my brother and his family.

More swimming and eating, but this time with different cousins.

And a lesson in pre-computer flight navigation from my brother, who has apparently been a pilot long enough now that he learned this before GPS navigation took over.

We took a different route home, since we were leaving from Phoenix. We went through the Salt River canyon, which is a pretty neat drive.

We had our lunch stop at Carrizo Creek, a tributary of the Salt River.

A. had lots of good camping sites in mind after we got past the Arizona border into New Mexico, but just before we got to the border, we started running into frequent and heavy rainstorms. There were black clouds and lightning all around most of our way home, so we gave up on the idea of camping and instead stopped at a motel that accepted dogs in Socorro, New Mexico.

I've stayed at a lot of motels over the years with A. Some of them are pretty nasty. This was one of the better ones.

Two dogs in crates, four children eating dinner on the floor, and two adults trying to maintain order. It was quite a scene.

We left fairly early the next morning and got home around 1 p.m. 

The neighbor who was taking care of the animals and watering my garden did an excellent job, and I found several hollyhocks blooming. And that means . . . 

It's the first real Monday Bouquet of the year! Hooray!

There you have it! My life (and our trip) snapshotted.