14 days, 2 sore knees, and 6 toenails later...

...here is our grand canyon story.

Hiking in on gabe's birthday I had to try and do something special that involved little materials and even less weight. So many of you contributed to this "grand" birthday experience and that is what made is so special. Gabe received over 20 birthday messages throughout the day and the toughest part of our entire trip.

Our first day, hiking down, Hermit's Rest trail was more of a challenge than I ever imagined it to be. I knew hiking the canyon was going to be difficult physically but I had no idea what it could do to your mind. The second day, while walking on blister covered feet is when I realized; this canyon does two things to people.

1. she will chew you up and spit you out

2. she will chew you up and swallow you whole


I was definitely feeling her chew but was hoping I could hold on to the edges of her throat and pull myself out of this place.

While we were in the depths of it though, these thoughts seemed to fade more and more with each passing hour. The views you get from being with in the canyon are incredible. The walls, sky, river, and ever changing colors of all of these things left us speechless many times.

We spent 3 nights in the canyon and met more people than we expected along the way, each on their own planned journey. One night we were able to sleep under the stars, the other nights rodents came out too early in the evening for us to feel comfortable with not setting up tents. Each night those rodents made sure to make their mark one way or another though.



We were able to sit and relax in cool water twice during the trip which was a huge bonus surprise. Gabe did an awesome job planning this trip, we ate well, had a great route and made great memories with great friends.

I'm glad we all were able to go with option number 1.

lovely saturday

we went out to Boyce Thompson Arboretum with a friend and her cutie pie son. Its about an hour east of us but completely worth the drive, it is such a beautiful place to be. The best part of it -- you can TOUCH the plants!! :) wow such a novel concept to use all of your senses to explore...

Seriously the softest plant i have EVER felt. It was just like a freshly shampooed dogs ear. i wanted to take it home.

the wildflowers are just starting to come out, its going to be a good show again this spring.

Gabe's photography skills at work

Silas smelling the flowers


Ginormous red gum eucalyptus tree - this is the smaller one actually. They have one that's 8 feet in diameter and over 100 feet tall.

The weather is the best right now. We are loving it and pledge to do a hike per weekend until it gets gross hot again. I hope we succeed with this challenge!

some of you are going to think we're crazy...

the rest of you know we are -- crazy about being outdoors. Last weekend we ventured up northeast into the mountains because they got a big storm which brought in a lot of snow. Gabe and I finally have our snowshoes down here for the first time. So we wanted to get out and play in the snow. We planned on getting up there and finding a camping spot in one of the many campgrounds and going snowshoeing.

we had a wonderful drive up and they did indeed have a lot of snow to play in. Soon after driving on the 260 past all of the many campgrounds we discovered they were all closed - huh. We pulled off the road where there was a trail head and decided to at least get some snowshoeing out of the trip before the sun set. We had a good little hike but were quickly reminded how tiring snowshoeing can be and took a lot of breaks . Gabe discovered that he had stepped in dog poop and was leaving a little of it behind with every step in the snow. I'm not sure that he ever did get over stepping in dog poop with snow shoes on. We found a couple little streams that were running from the snow melt and it felt magical, like we were the only ones to discover that beauty.

We came up with a good plan during our little hike -- we would camp in the parking lot of this trail head (it was covered in snow). My only concern was that it was a very popular place to sled as well and well we might have a lot of people traffic at our little made up camp site. So we decided to just drive down random roads and see if we could find an open somewhat flat spot that we could make our campsite. (Undeveloped camping is very popular here). Thankfully we did find a great spot and set up camp. We got a fire, dinner, and sleeping quarters set up fully equipped with a heater. Needless to say winter camping attempt #2 -- successful! (Attempt #1 happened back in college in MN -- not so much a success when you're driving home at 10 p.m.) We had such a great time - it was a wonderful way to spend valentines weekend.

Here is our set up -- in the front right you can see the table gabe built for us.

Just two people loving nature

The ice crystals on the car in the morning were beautiful -- reminded me of my snow study days during student teaching. Its amazing how many different shapes snowflakes take on and all the reasoning behind that specific shape. A great morning treat (probably more so when you don't get it months in a row)! It was 15 degrees in the morning for those of you wondering how "true" our winter camping experience was down in AZ. :)

All Things Spiny

We went on a wonderful hike this past weekend in South Mountain Park, near our house. I don't even want to talk about the last time we were out on a hike, it was so good to finally be out again. I was inspired on our way back down the mountain by all the wonderful spines we were passing on the different cacti. I'm always intrigued by how different they all are but have never taken pictures of them. So this was my attempt. They are gorgeous. There IS color in the desert, just much more subtle than many places. Take a lookskie for yourself.Looking up at the wonderful saguaro

I didn't capture this as good as it was that day - the tips of these spines are golden yellow are were glowing in the sun.
OUCH! These guys are huge!

I couldn't get over just how red these spines were so I had to isolate the red and make everything else black and white. Below you'll see it with the green cactus, it was the perfect Christmas cactus.