On the Rim

Isn't that a pretty view? This is what we saw every day on our camping trip last week. To give you an idea of how close it was to us, here's a picture of our site:




(Benjamin is showing me his lost tooth, in case you're wondering...)




This is a picture looking in the opposite direction...




Cross that little dirt road and take a couple dozen steps and this is what you see...



Mmmm, gorgeous. Looking to the left of this view was a very inviting trail...


...but I didn't take it. Maybe next time.



A few miles down the road from our site was a Rim trail and we did walk it one day.

A very nice lady took this picture for us. Christopher's expression cracks me up. It looks like he's thinking "Huh??"

It's a loooooong way down!



The boys had a grand time throwing pine cones over the edge.

This year we went to the Woods Canyon Lake area, which is about 2 1/2 hours outside of Phoenix. It's definitely worth the extra 30 minutes past Payson. The area was beautiful and we spent most of our time relaxing right there at our site.

I should've taken pictures of us playing card games, because we did a lot of that. (Ask Brian who the Gin Rummy champion is... go ahead, ask him. Heh heh.)

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The hammock is always a hit...

There was a huge open area behind our tent - nature's playground...

I took these photos the first day, and Ben's not in them because he was sick the first day.

Poor guy. But he did feel better by mid-afternoon, so that was good!

I love this picture:
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On the day of the hike, we drove down to the fish hatchery.

Brian and I have been there before, but the kids have never been. Also, we've never seen them loading up fish.

One guy gets into the tank and pushes a screen through the water to crowd the fish. Then the other guy gets the big loading machine going. The fish are sucked up through the orange tube (the picture doesn't show it, but you could actually see tons of little fish bodies zooming through that tube), then the fish slide down the white chute into the truck while the water goes through the gray tube and back into the tank. It was pretty cool watching them do that. This fish hatchery is government owned and they stock several lakes throughout the state.

They have a very small visitors center, and inside are several mounted fish along the top of the wall. These are representations of record-breaking fish caught in various lakes here in the state. The tag on the wall tells what kind of fish it was, when and where it was caught, and how big it was. The fish on display show the actual size. I think that's incredible!

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You can't feed the fish in the holding tanks, but at the base of the hatchery is a big pond where you can feed fish until you run out of quarters.

Every time you throw in a handful of pellets, tons of fish come swarming to the surface. It's pretty fun to watch. Even after we ran out of quarters (and we brought a lot just for this reason) the kids started hunting for stray pellets on the ground so they could toss them in too.

This little squirrel came right up to John! He got so close that at one point he was almost between John's feet. I thought he was going to try to climb John like a tree!

Playing at the stream fed by the hatchery.

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On the way back from the hatchery we stopped at a place called Rancho Tonto. On our last day when Brian asked what everyone's favorite part was, this was at the top of everyone's list. (Oh, except for Christopher. His favorite part was playing with sparklers every night and having those glowing bracelets every night. But he liked this part too.)

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Anyway, behold Rancho Tonto...
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That's a stocked pond. You can rent poles for $1 each, and any fish you catch are $0.75 an inch. Sounds cheap right? We thought so too until we got the total at the end. I honestly can't bear to print it, but that's okay, I'm over it now. (Really. I promise.) It was a fun experience though and since everyone enjoyed it so much, I'm glad we did it. (Not that we'll be doing it again - it would've been cheaper to buy those kiddie fishing poles for the kids and take them to the lake - so guess what they'll be getting for Christmas.) Anyway.

Guess who caught the first fish?

Christopher! Yeah baby!

Brian couldn't get the hook out of this poor fish. He ended up putting it in the bucket, hook and all, so the guy at the shop could cut it out later.

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Once the boys caught their fish, Brian asked me if I wanted to try. I surprised myself by saying yes...

That's my fish baby!

This is Brian demonstrating how to hold the fish so we could take a picture of me with my catch. He put his finger into the fish's mouth and brought it back out through the fish's gulls!

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Yuck.

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I borrowed Christopher's fish for my photo opp instead.

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Our last night there we went down to the amphitheatre at the lake to watch a ranger presentation. Here are the boys playing on the stage while Brian and I figured out we were at the wrong place...

We had to drive up to another campsite and by then the presentation was half over, but that was alright. I was a little disappointed in the topic - sheep herding through the Arizona desert - but it was interesting anyway.

Finally, on our way out of camp to go home, we stopped to check out this sink hole.

It looked a little different from what I expected (up the road about 7 miles is another campsite we went to years ago and that had an awesome sink hole before it got ruined by bark beetles) but it was still kinda pretty. I like all the ferns.


And that was our camping trip. A fun time was had by all.