Adri's First Real Camping Trip

A couple weeks ago I decided I wanted to take Adri on her first real camping trip. We have taken her camping before at Heartbar, if you call that camping, sleeping in a trailer. I've written in previous post about how we would take her to Bass Pro Shops on cold weekends, tell her we're going camping, and let her play on the ATVs and in the tents. Well now it was time for the real thing.

Being how it was her first trip, and it was suppose to be a little on the hot side, we decided to just do one night to see how she does. She was pretty excited about it, especially since we brought her little princess tent and set it up inside our tent. Last Friday we got to The Lost Dutchman around 5pm and went to setup camp. The only problem is the spot we reserved had no spot to put a tent unless we wanted to put it on the asphalt. So we had to get a different spot with no electricity or water. Lesson learned for next time.

We had no firewood and we were in the middle of the desert. After setting up our tent we went for a sunset walk and found a couple big logs, ten feet long with branches, that were completely dead and probably full of termites. So I dragged four or five of these things to the road where I hid them behind a bush (I think Natalie has a picture of me doing it), took Natalie and Adri back to camp, and came back to get them with the car. I just barely managed to break it all up small enough to get it in the car.

After dinner I started a nice bonfire. Adri was out before she really even got to enjoy the fire and we had to skip dessert. Around ten that night my friend from work, Hank, gave me a call and said he was there and lost. I thought he had bailed on us. Since he got there so late he had us up til almost two in the morning. After a couple hours of sleep I was up and ready to start my day. I made my traditional camping breakfast and wrapped it all up in a tortilla making the newly created Joe's Breakfast Burrito. It was amazing.

After breakfast we decided to take a hike towards the base of The Flatiron. Hank has a really nice camera so he was able to take some good pictures of us all hiking. I had brought my sombrero with the intention of taking just one shot, and I got it. I had to keep wearing the sombrero though because I realized it really does work at keep the heat off.

We made it all the way up to the base of The Flatiron. Then Adri decided she was tired. It's so hard being carried up a mountain. Once we turned around and headed back she fell asleep on me. Big surprise. Once we got back to camp it was already time to break it down. So we packed it all up and then we over to one of the Ramada's, ate some desert, played games, and hung out for a couple hours before leaving.

It was a fun trip but way too short. We had our tent up for a whole 19 hours. It was a good test run though. Next time we'll go for a three day weekend. Hopefully we can get my sister to come out too, buy a kiddie pool, get a site with water, and just hang out in the heat.

The picture I had to get. Gonna make a poster of it. Next time I need a poncho and a Corona though.

The morning Jeff, my dad, and I hiked The Flatiron someone wrote "cleanup your s***" on this sign. Well this time someone had written something else. I can see they share my views.

Trying to pretend she is climbing a mountain. The dead give away that she isn't is the lack of fear in her face.

At the base of The Flatiron. We went off the trail a little and got a view of the entire trail going up. Something we couldn't see the morning we hiked all the way up. I highlighted the trail in the picture under this one. Like I've said before, it's not really a trail, it's just climbing up one rock after another. It looks a bit more intense in real life than it does in this picture though.

This is how all our hikes end.

We found this Saguaro that was full of bird homes. 

A couple of the cacti at the small garden by the entrance of the park.