Day Trips

A couple of weeks ago, Jeff needed to go to Show Low for work. He goes to all the Home Depots in his region to ckeck on the Tuff Sheds that are on display at the Home Depots. Show Low is a couple of hours East of here in pine forest, so we made a day trip of it with the kids. These are pictures of a very large canyon that we drove through.

Yes, we actually drove down to the bottom of this. You can kind of see the road.

Then we stopped to take some pictures.

Pictures don't quite give the actual view, but it was a huge, deep canyon.

I don't have any pictures of Show Low. Not much to see there, I guess, but it was a lot cooler there.

---

Then this past Friday we went to Yuma. For the same reason, to check out the Home Depot there. It was hot! Yuma is in the other direction--3 hours West of here and right on the border of California, again Jeff took all of us for another day trip. Then, in a moment of craziness that we are not able to satisfactorily explain, we decided, what the heck, we are halfway there already, let's keep going west and hit the beach in San Diego. Yep, no clothes, no plans, no idea how to get there and no change of underwear, just like that, our day trip turned into a 2 day trip.

These are the sand dunes just outside of Yuma. This is like the sandy desert you see in movies with the camels out in the middle of no where.

Derek and I were fascinated with the fact that you could see the actual Mexican border fence. It's the dark line at the end of the sand here. We followed it most of the way into San Diego.

We had to go through two border patrol check stations both going and coming.

Remember, this was a last minute decision. We had no towels for the beach, no change of clothes, nothing to go that far. So, just outside of San Diego, we stopped at a Walmart and bought towels, sunscreen and a swimsuit for Jeff because he had long pants. Anyway, the lady at Walmart was just making conversation and could tell we were either going swimming or to the beach. So we asked her which beach would be the best and how to get there. She suggested two places, but the one was easiest just to stay on the main highway and just keep driving until you can't any more.

Here we are at the beach. We made it. This is a great picture.

I must admit though, I was freezing. I had to wrap the towels around me to keep warm.

It was very relaxing.

Jeff and the kids were wet, sandy and very cold.
As we were driving in, we passed "hotel circle." So, we just went back to that and found us a hotel. I should have gotten a picture of that, but I didn't think about it. It was a nice hotel. Other than we didn't get the a/c turned on until about midnight. Partly because the kids were so cold and we didn't try to figure it out until no one could sleep. Jeff and I had a hard time sleeping on the pull out bed. We have bruises from the springs poking out. We chose that bed because it was seperated from the other beds by a sliding door, so we thought it might be best since we were all either sleeping in our underwear or our same clothes that we had worn and got wet in the ocean.

Anyway, the next morning we had decided to just go see the beach one more time (not get wet or anything, but just to see it again). I suggested we go see the other one that the lady at Walmart suggested. It is Coronado. We didn't realize it is an island. So this is a picture of the big bridge we drove over (not a picture of a taxi). It is very, very high, it has to be for large ships to go under it.

This is from the bridge looking back toward San Diego.

Jeff and the boys were fascinated with the air craft carriers and all the boats in the harbor.

This is looking toward the island.


This is a small beach on the island. In the center of the picture the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz is facing us, there were also quite a few other navy ships in port, the boys were very impressed. The island was beautiful. I wish I would have gotten pictures of all the little shops and things. It was very pretty and nice.

Again, a picture of a big boat. I let Derek and Nicholas take a couple of pictures.

This is just looking across the bay. It really isn't as far as this picture makes it look.

Here we are on the dock (dirty, 2-day-old smelly clothes and all)

Then we decided we better head back over that bridge (in the background) back to real life in Gilbert. It was a great trip!