Pushing 40

I recently had my 39th birthday. I'm now living out my last days in my 30's and then I'm over the hill. There hasn't been a whole lot going on in our house this fall. Normally it's cooling down in September so we start going out more. This year has been hell. On top of lock downs it's the hottest year on record in Phoenix. Only 1.5 inches of rain this monsoon downtown and as of today they are at 145 days over 100 for the year, which looks like the last triple digit this year. Our early October was more like our normal early September. It's been miserable. 

The week of my birthday I wasn't feeling very good. I got sick and the night before I couldn't sleep. I ended up getting out of bed and spent the entire night playing on my computer. I finally went to bed for less than an hour at 5am and called in sick on my birthday. I can't function on an hour of sleep anymore at my age.  

My friend George picked me up that morning for what I thought would be a couple hours of riding in the desert. It ended up being most the day. We went over 50 miles through dirt roads north of Lake Pleasant and found some really cool stuff. It's funny that from our house we can see the smaller hills and some of the mountains after a good snow but once we get just a couple miles away the views are so much more dramatic. Even hiking around pleasant I wasn't able to get into a position where I could see all these mountains. A few hours on an ORV and you end up having a completely different view of central Arizona.

Our first stop was to pick up George's friend. George's friend bought 7 acres out by Castle Hot Springs Resort. I guess it used to be the sister resort and one of Al Capone's hideouts. He has a picture of Capone in front of his fireplace. The house and land needs a lot of work but it's a cool piece of property. He has a pool the size of my entire back yard and then up the hill is another pool by some old tennis courts. Both pools are 15 feet deep. The pools are empty right now but there's a lot of potential there. There are huge eucalyptus shading the entire property too so it's doesn't really even look like the desert. More on the rest of our trip below with the pictures.

Taking pictures before bed time.

I started binge watching Married With Children. Dean likes to try to sing along when the theme song comes on. Here is is crashed out during an episode.

After my dad left Dean was playing Grandpa. He's using his magnetiles to pretend he's tiling the floor.

As mentioned in other post, Dean's favorite new thing is the vacuum. Now he has a toy vacuum and spends a lot of his day pretending to cleanup.

Zach thinking he's Mr. Cool driving with his hands behind his head.

Teaching Dean to drive.

Last week we took Dean to Anthem Park to ride the train. It was getting hot so after a quick train ride we were done.

Pictures from my birthday ride with George.

This is around Lake Pleasant. There were probably 40 burros in this picture.

The hills in this picture are a couple miles west of my house. We are on the east side of the hills in this picture.

Lake Pleasant from the north side.

We found this crested saguaro just north of the lake.

This is a small dam just to the side of the slightly larger China Dam that was build back in the 1800s.

The back side of the China Dam. This dam was used for mining in the late 1880s.

The front side of the China Dam.

This is the spillway for the dam. They just cut it right through the mountain. No fancy pipes or anything. 

From up on the dam.

Lots of little rock caves around this area.

There was a rock wall here with blue rock. 

One of the blue rocks I found.

About 10-15 miles north of Lake Pleasant.

The peak by Castle Hot Springs.

Castle Hot Springs Resort. Rumor is the cheapest rooms there are $600 a night. You can't drive in. You either get brought in with a horse and coach or you take a helicopter ride.