cpz designs Digital scrapbooking. Life. All mixed together

Road Trip 2011. Part 2.

Okay, so its not tomorrow. Its several days later and that's okay because we've been having a wonderful time. Where were we? Oh yes, June 6th. leaving Roswell NM and heading into Arizona. Which was BEAUTIFUL.

Slide Rock Canyon was a last minute addition for an afternoon picnic and swim. A big shout-out THANK YOU to my Mom for throwing this out as we were driving out of her driveway, as in "oh, are you going to Oak Creek Canyon? If you are near there, you should go see it. Its really pretty and they have a slide rock." This turned out to be a really fun afternoon after a couple of days in the car.

Then we headed to Grand Canyon National Park. And the cute little Polaroid frames end because honestly, you just can't fit that landscape into a square.

For those of you curious about the dark oval around my mouth, I have no idea. My camera decided to give me a mustache and a beard or some weird shadow from my hat or its remnants of the aliens in Roswell. Honestly, no clue and can't make it go away in Photoshop. Such is life with photos on the road.

No, they were not really sitting on the edge of the canyon. We take shots like this to make it look like that and then I panic that everyone will think we're nuts letting our child sit on the edge of an abyss.

I still appear to have a 5 o'clock shadow. It must be the hat.

Seriously awesome stuff.

And then there's this.

Welcome to the Middle of Nowhere. And would you like some alpaca with your gas and your sandwich? No? Are you sure? Cuz we're really cute and we don't seem to spit quite so much as the llamas.

I'll post Part 3 soon!

Road Trip 2011. Part 1.

So. We were supposed to leave on June 2 and we did. Temporarily. We got as far as the other side of Sugar Land and the connections between the axles and the frame of the trailer snapped. It looked like a broken axle with the tire hanging bizarrely sideways and smooshed into the second tire behind it. We thought the trip was a goner. We stayed patient (and by we, I mean Isabella. She was a ROCK. No panic, no whining, most impressive). We waited 4 hours for a tow truck (thank you Good Sam roadside assistance program for finding someone with the equipment to tow the trailer), and then crossed our fingers and hoped we would still be able to get out of town.

The guys at Master Hitch in Houston worked on the trailer all day Friday and by 5pm, we were on the road, only 30 hours behind on our trip. We stopped in Seguin for the night and on Saturday, hauled ourselves to Carlsbad. We made our first roadside rest area stop and had our picnic lunch. It was clean and shaded and that was all we needed.

When we got to Carlsbad, we missed the bats because quite frankly, we were so exhausted, but we've seen the caverns before so this was the most logical highlight to skip if we wanted to get back on schedule.

The next day we headed across New Mexico to Gallup. There were brushfires along the way but we made it. It was strictly a travel day but we made a few stops along the way.

The UFO Museum in Roswell. Scott fashioned us some hats out of aluminum foil to keep the aliens from dragging us back to wherever they come from. The police let us park our RV in their visitor parking lot. A great little town that has accepted its claim to fame and very cleverly uses it to make money. I'm still not convinced but it was a nice stop to stretch our legs and act silly.

We drove through Winslow, AZ and tried to stand on a corner but it didn't work out. Nowhere to stop the RV so I suppose its the thought that counts.

But we enjoyed our day, getting our kicks on Route 66 and even staying the night on the historic road. This USA RV Park in Gallup was super clean, very nice, had a great pool, and an even better laundry room. A nice stop.

I'll post more tomorrow!

Camping with friends part 2…

No camping trip is complete without playing with knives.

Laughing with friends.

Walking in the woods, by day.

And night.

And sleeping in tents.

Yeah, okay. I didn't do that last part. I had air conditioning in our trailer. But the sentiment was there. We had a great time and have already planned a trip for the fall!

Camping with friends…

A couple of weekends ago, we went to Stephen F Austin State Park with some friends from the neighborhood. There was fishing for the young and the, uh, old.

Some people enjoyed it more than others.

And we had our very own Scott The Fishing Guide with us.

Of course, no camping trip is complete without sitting around in the dirt.

More to come tomorrow!