Summer Trips Part One

This summer has been a glorious whirlwind of travel! As you know, we started off the last day of school headed to Disneyland. A couple of weeks later, Shane and I went to San Diego to mix a little business with our anniversary getaway. Recently, he had a conference in northern Arizona so we tagged along and went to Bearizona, the Flagstaff Arboretum and then headed up to Colorado.

San Diego was awesome! We stayed in a gorgeous hotel right next door to Seaport Village. We did a harbor cruise (I had not done one of those since before we had kids) and we toured the USS Midway! What a great experience! I really didn't care much about doing it but Shane was really excited so I said sure ;) It turned out to be amazing!

Our trip to Flagstaff was great, it was pleasently chilly! We swam, got in the hot tub, hiked all over the Arboretum, saw squirrels and all sorts of beautiful birds. We went to Bearizona which is a preserve of sorts. They have bears, wolves, bison, fox, badgers, mountain goats and more! You drive through part of it and then there is a walk through section which is much like a tiny zoo. They had adult bears in the drive through part, adolescent and baby bears in the walk through section. We had a great time and again, the weather was gorgeous!

We finished up our 2 days in Flagstaff and headed straight up to Colorado. It was sad to see how much of the Ponderosa Pines that had been destroyed by the Bark Beetles. The aspens were still alive and flourishing but the pines were just dead and brown. Crumbling in many cases. It had been 12 years since I had been to Colorado, I had forgotten how much I liked it there. We went up through Durango, Pagosa Springs, Wolf Creek Pass and stayed in Southfork in some cute little cabins. We fished, hiked, saw a TON of wildlife. OMG, I have never seen so many different kinds of animals not in a zoo! We drove to Lake City which is breathtaking!! I saw moose, deer, squirrels, beaver dams, porcupine nests, birds....so much! The valley leading there with all the horses and ranches was so beautiful. It was like watching a Robert Redford movie, so scenic! We went to Creede a couple of times. I love that little town, so much colorful history. We went to the old Creede cemetary to find the Leonard family plot. Apparently, Leonards settled there to mine silver in the 1800s. The cemetary was very pretty and very old. We walked and walked until Shane found the Leonard plots.

We went fishing one day. It was one of the few cloudy days during our stay. The kids were super excited! Alyssa has watched so many episodes of River Monsters, she was delighted to try out her own fishing skills. She was surprisingly quiet and patient. I reminded the kids that fishing is not an exciting sport (unless you are Jeremy Wade, netting a monster) and that they had to be very quiet. They had a great time and we were out there much longer than I figured we would be! The fish were not biting but they were well fed by the time we left our spot....We all loved the small towns and being outdoors so much. We can't wait to go back!