Pinal Peak

This summer I have a list of campgrounds that our family wants to visit, some with the trailer, some with the tent.  There are some beautiful places in Arizona that have wonderful weather even in the summer, and we haven't seen a fraction of them.  Last week we went on our first camp-out of the year.  We've already been to Pinal Peak, although it's been almost two years.  This time we were in a different campground though, and we really enjoyed it.  It was cool and breezy, the trees gave us tons of shade, and we had the place almost all to ourselves.  The kids had a blast.  It's great how when they're this young, if enough time passes between similar events, they experience it like it's the first time all over again!  Bree did remember going to Tombstone last October in the trailer, but she didn't remember the last time we went tent-camping.


We did a little hiking, and had our first experience with geocaching.  I got on the website, entered some coordinates into our GPS, and we were off on a "treasure hunt."  The kids thought it was really cool, finding those boxes filled with "treasure" (really just random things people leave in there; we left some DPS stickers), and Chad even commented after finding the first one, "This is actually pretty fun."  Oh, ye of little faith.


We relaxed on the hammock, let the kids gobble Starburst as quickly as they could unwrap them (they couldn't remember ever tasting anything so yummy), and I enjoyed an alarming amount of S'mores.  Let me just say: dark chocolate bars are the way to go.  This was the first time I've tried them in S'mores, and I'm never going back.  Bree is not a fan of marshmallows, so she just wanted the chocolate and graham crackers.  I made one for her just like I make them for myself, with the chocolate warm and melty.  After she ate that one, she said, "Can I have another smear?  I just want a hard smear this time."  After laughing at her cute pronunciation mistake, I discovered that the melted chocolate was too much of a hassle in her opinion.  She just wanted me to hand over the chocolate and the grahams.  And Mason?  He doesn't really like marshmallows or chocolate.  He does like graham crackers, but he was too busy playing to eat, using his crackers to smash ants.

By the time darkness rolled around, the kids were exhausted, which made for a relatively fuss-free bedtime and a quiet night.  But before that, Bree treated me to a "scary" camp story.