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.

 

The End Is Near

The last couple months we have been trying to enjoy the outdoors all we can before the end of the good weather and the start of hell season. We had a really mild winter here, several degrees above normal and hardly any freezes. Of course I predicted with a mild/warm winter we would have a cooler summer. Until last week it looked like I would be wrong. It was 100 degrees in the valley the last week of April and they were predicting a much cooler than normal May. Everyone though it was crazy but here we are on May 8th with a high in the mid sixties instead of the 90s. Anyways so even if we have a mild winter it's still 100+ days over a 100 degrees and it's gonna suck so we're enjoying the weather while we can.

 

A couple months ago we took the kids to a train park in Scottsdale. They have model trains, an old presidential train from before Air Force One (I forgot who all rode in it but I know that FDR did), and they have a mini train for rides across the park. It was a good way to burn a couple hours.

 

Shortly after that we discovered Cave Creek. I have put a couple post on that one but not our last trip. On our last trip we were going to do a four mile hike with the kids. But when we got there it was pushing 90 degrees, there's no shade, and I just wasn't feeling it. So instead we decided to look for the Michelin Man Saguaro. We had tried to find it on two previous trips but got bad directions. It's less than a half mile from the start of the Slate Trail and this time we found it. It's a really cool cactus. There are only five like this in the world and they are all around gold mines. They think the chemicals in the run off water makes the cactus mutate.

 

A couple weeks ago we went to CA for my dad's 55 birthday. I don't have any pictures from that trip except the one below with Zach wearing an army helmet. It was a short but fun trip. They just opened a new Mr. Taco by my dad's house so we ate there 4 times in five days. It was so good. I got to go to Bass Pro with my dad and Zach. I was a little miserable all weekend though because I didn't bring a sweater. It was nearly 100 here that week and we got there and it was cold all weekend.

 

A couple days after we got back Natalie's aunt and uncle came into town. We got to take a short trip up to Sedona and Natalie got to hike up Daisy Mountain with her uncle one morning. I had already made the trip up that peak they morning before they got in so I wasn't up for another trip. I did the 7 miles in just under 3 hours which would have been even shorter if not for the encounter I made with a rattlesnake. I was down the mountain and heading towards the car when I heard the snake rattling. I looked down in a creek bed and saw him moving away from me. I decided I wanted to get some pictures and instead of moving straight down the creek I went around thinking it would be easier. Thing is when I got down to the area where the snake was I didn't know exactly where it was. So I crossed back over the creek only 4-5 feet away from the snake not knowing it was there. It was only when I turned around I could see him on the other side of the bush from where I just came from. I took some pictures and a video, got him good and mad, and sent him on his way.

 

Other than that nothing much new going on here. Zach is still not walking. It's not that he can't, it's just that he's scared and lazy. He is starting to pick up a few words. Mama, Papa, Up, Walk, and then he just grunts and screams for everything else.

 



 

One afternoon I was watching Zach and he was giving me hell at lunch time. Mid way through his lunch this happened.

 

@ Cave Creek 

Michelin Man Saguaro
Latitude 33.82936
Longitude -111.99535

 Zach loves his mangoes.

Eating like a boss.

Natalie got Zach this circus tent. The kid loves to hide in it.

I bought a bin from Walmart and before I could put anything in it Adri decided she would make it her home.

When we got to CA I found the toy rifle and helmet we bought at the Patton museum. So after bath time we took some pictures of Zach.

 Kids playing in the water. 

 

My rattlesnake encounter. I crossed this dried up creek bed just to the left of this bush this snake was next to.

 

 

 @Sedona

I was thinking of purchasing this house.

We stopped at Black Canyon on the way back to see the giant Saguaros.

 Zach fell asleep eating his food the other night. This was after waking him up two times. I guess it would have been that much funnier if I got the whole thing. We had to wake him up because I was afraid he was gonna choke on his food.