Darren’s visit

Originally we were going to take the camper van to Idaho and meet Darren in the mountains east of Boise. But the smoke map looked like this:

So he reluctantly agreed to fly down here and go camping in New Mexico instead. He stipulated he wanted big trees, lakes, creeks, and NO CACTUS!

Ok Darren, you got it.

John being the civil engineer.

Problem is, that water has to come from somewhere.

Here’s John and Darren, working to get Darren’s tent set up before the summer afternoon rains come (which in New Mexico we inexplicably call monsoon rains, even though – hello, this is not southeast Asia).

Kira says, “We’re here! We’re here! Time to play ball!”

Complete blue sky in one direction.

But it’s looking pretty ominous the other direction.

Uhhh…maybe it’s time to retreat into the van for awhile.

We went on several good hikes.

Where we saw lots of signs of wildlife. Bear scat, coyote scat, deer and elk scat, and what is this?

Wow, did a bear do that? Here’s John pretending he’s a bear (for scale for the photo).

We saw the same marks on a number of trees.

So much for this poor little tree.

Whatever it was, it had some reach.

Wait, what’s that? Oh. Just one of the dogs. 

Darren

Kira

The aspen was just barely starting to turn yellow in a few places. 

         

Yep, what the man ordered.

Those are Idaho-worthy mountains and lakes, right here in New Mexico.

But we paid for it, lol! We didn’t mind the rain too much at first.

But then it started hailing. That’s my WTF face.

But all told, we had a great time camping.

On the way to the airport we stopped at the biopark.

Look at these funny flowers – they are asymmetrical.

Why does John always take photos of me when I’m staring at my phone? Or maybe I’m always…nah. He just picks times when I won’t notice he’s taking a picture, so I can’t tell him to stop it.

Thanks for coming down, Darren!