lessons upon lessons upon blessings
[side note: for details and conversation on all of this, I'm hopping on Facebook Live later today so you can look for that live or watch the recording. :) hope to see you there!]
this trip thus far has been amazing. I've seen things and places I've never seen before (we all have), we've bonded as a family, shared sweet moments and hard moments. there have been INCREDIBLE views and beauty, campfires, baked treats, and lots of walks.
Saddleback Mountain, our first boondocking spot post Tucson, just west of Phoenix on I-10
Our view... ended up including sunrises, sunsets AND rainbows and low clouds... beautiful!
From our hike "up the mountain" with the kiddos.
Sunrise on moving day!
and we've learned and grown (growing pains anybody??!!) and learned.
Sunset at our one-night spot before Buckskin Mountain State Park. This spot was not as special as Saddleback Mountain, but still good. I posted this picture and said it looked like the cactus was giving me the bird... jokes on me. (This was the night before the morning our camper battery died.)
two weeks ago, about the time we realized we needed to move less often, we called to book a state park in AZ and they could only get us 2 nights. we boondocked 3 nights to get from Tucson to the state park (2 different places), and 2 nights afterward to get to Desert Hot Springs, CA (2 different places). needless to say, it wasn't our plan but we moved A LOT. the week was rough.
Parker Dam, just north of Buckskin Mountain State Park, just south of Lake Havasu (and Lake Havasu City).
Beautiful beaches on a bend in the Colorado Rive along the Arizona/California border. We loved our 2 nights here and would've stayed longer.
Water was COLD but the sand and sun were warm.
They had a silly game with the buoys they played; entertained them for hours!
Hooded towels for the win!! I would shower them off after beach play, put them in hooded towels and send them running back to the camper. ;)
combine that with running our camper battery dead (did you see Ben's blog?) AND having our grey water tank back up in the shower/bathroom floor and it was too much. yup, went in to brush our teeth and the next thing we know we're soaking up water with towels and taking water in buckets out from the shower basin.
[first boondocking spot having conversations about caves, oranges on the stoop, THE London Bridge that was moved to Lake Havasu City and boardwalk biking, then our last boondocking spot in a casino parking lot north of Joshua Tree National Park]
truth be told, in the moment, we rolled with it, problem-solved and moved on. "we got this!" but by the time we got to Desert Hot Springs... it hit me. I was tired. really tired.
AND the places we stayed that crazy week were beautiful (there were 5 of them).
AND Desert Hot Springs was a nice break: RV park, full hook-ups, heated hot springs pools, nice laundry facilities and a trip to the Living Desert Zoo. ahhhh......
View from the naturally heated pool at our RV park in Desert Hot Springs.
The wind farms in Palm Valley made for great discussion with the kids!
we've learned a lot about what the kids need, what we need, what our camper is capable of, how we want to travel. it's good. and now... the west coast.
