Yellowstone

So, those of you who are Facebook friends with me may already know, but I have accepted a position to work at Yellowstone National Park from April 20 to July 23 (or possibly a little longer).
I decided that I would apply to a few National Parks for summer jobs because I have no plans between traveling and college in the fall, so I knew I would have a few months of free time.
I heard back from Yellowstone about three weeks after I applied, and then waited the maximum amount of time before replying to make sure I didn't get any more job offers. I didn't even get a chance to apply to all of the places that I could because I already got an offer.
I will be stationed at the Mammoth Hot Springs inside of Yellowstone working at a deli type place for the three months, and I will be staying in a dorm with a meal plan while I'm there.
So I will have to work, but I get 3 whole months to explore Yellowstone and the surrounding area!
It should be an adventure!

Also, this means that all of you have to come visit me while I'm there, so plan your vacations now! :)

For those who wondered what my plans are between now and when I start in April; I plan on staying in Phoenix until the middle of March and then going home for the month in between. This still leaves time in between Yellowstone and college to travel more if I want to, or stay longer in Yellowstone if I want to. :)

Connie, The Farm, Quilt Shows, and Marathons

Since Wickenburg last weekend, we have added a new temporary occupant to the house.
Aunt Sandy's friend Connie came here on Thursday, and has been visiting since.
We picked her up just before noon from an Aunt who lives on the other side of Phoenix (she was there for a couple of days before we picked her up). On the way back we stopped at a place called 'The Farm at South Mountain'. It was BEAUTIFUL.
When you are out here in Arizona, the cactus are really interesting but after a while you kind of want to see some green instead of the brown desert. This is the place to go. It's like you've stepped into an orchard in the middle of the countryside when really you're on the edge of Phoenix in the middle of the desert. They had a cute little shop that sold sandwiches, soup, salads, and various baked goods so we had a lovely lunch on one of their many picnic tables and enjoyed the great weather and atmosphere before walking around. In the Farm there were two other restaurants (a breakfast cafe and a fancy restaurant that served supper), a tiny gift shop, and plenty of room for a nice stroll.
It was a nice little retreat.

At the Farm

After we went to the Farm at South Mountain, we drove up South Mountain to get a nice view of Phoenix from above.

Friday was more of a relaxing/do nothing day where we spent the day visiting, but Saturday was pretty busy.

The reason, or one of the reasons, Connie came out to visit was to participate in a marathon on Sunday, so Saturday we needed to pick up her race packet with her information and race tags.

So we started off Saturday morning by stopping by the local farmer's market that is only once a month before hunting out the place we needed to get the race information, which just happened to be in a mall courtyard area that was hosting another, larger farmer's market. So we spent all morning at farmer's markets, but accomplished picking up the race packet as well before making our way to Gram's to check out a quilt show.

The people inside Gram's community put together a quilt show (of a pretty good size) that we wanted to check out. So we met her for lunch before spending over an hour admiring the hard work that goes into making a quilt. 

One of the aisles of quilts

This morning was the marathon, and Connie did great! She met her goal and beat her personal best, coming in with the time of 4hr31min27sec.

If I had the willpower to run 26 miles it would take me a lot longer than that. To celebrate we had a relaxing afternoon and went out to supper at a great Mexican place (Guadalahara's), and ended the night at the movies.

Aunt Sandy and Connie at Guadalahara's

Wickenburg

Lia and I went horseback riding!

Ok, I'll do this chronologically; first we went to the Toby Keith Bar and Grill with her work friends Wednesday night.
It was fun, they had three different live bands throughout the night who were all good, and good food too. The complaint of the night was that even though there was a dance floor, it was full of people who just stood still listening to the music rather than dancing.
But we had a good time with all of Lia's coworkers.

Thursday, we woke up and met Grandma for breakfast before going to Wickenburg to go horseback riding. Aunt Sandy found coupons for a trail ride; two for the price of one.
We got there, signed our lives away, and set off for a three hour ride.
Our guide (or wrangler), Dave, was very nice, had a great sense of humor, and helpful.
We set out, and after a few minutes he came around and checked all of our saddles and made sure everyone was comfortable, and helped out when there was trouble.

The best part of the ride was that after a half hour or so on the trail, since we were all doing great and keeping up, we decided to go off of the trail. For most of the 3 hours we were out riding we got to roam around the desert, going up and down hills and making our own way rather than just following a trail nose to tail on the horses like most rides of this nature would go. He encouraged us to make our own paths as we went along instead of just following in a line, as long as we were all together.
I even got to lead the pack for a little bit. We stopped to pick up a cow skull that we found as we were wandering, and after a bit of joking around Dave told me to take the lead, so everyone followed me for about ten minutes and I got to figure out where to go and what was the best path to get up and down a couple of hills before I handed the lead back over to him.

 Friday was less eventful but still fun; I went on a bike ride, Aunt Sandy and Uncle David went looking for and picked out granite countertops, and then Michele (Lia's friend) came over, I made fajitas for supper and we watched Notting Hill.

Today, we went back to Wickenburg.
Aunt Sandy, Uncle David and I met Gram for breakfast and then the four of us made our way to Wickenburg for their Gold Rush Days.

Wickenburg was a big gold town, (but is now known for their dude ranches) so every year they celebrate and have a carnival and whatnot. We got there in time to see the parade (which involve a lot of horses and started with a cattle drive at the front), and then walked through the art and craft fair, but couldn't find anything we needed.

The start of the parade.

Yes, that is a real cow inside of a car...

Part of the Art and Craft Fair

A little of downtown Wickenburg.

Tucson

We went adventuring on Wednesday and Thursday.

Since everyone in the house except Lia don't have work, we base our weekends around her two days off, Wednesday and Thursday.
So, since I am here and exploring and Lia likes to go off and do things on her days off, we spent the 'weekend' in Tucson. We drove down on Tuesday night after Lia got off work and got our hotel so that Wednesday morning we could wake up and go without the two hour drive.
Now, our exploring wasn't the typical touristy type, but we saw a lot of interesting things.
Our first stop was an operating open pit copper mine.

Our tour guide was very nice and we got to see the mine as well as a few of the processes they use to extract the copper from the ore. It was all pretty interesting and way too complex for me to remember let alone explain.

Next we went to a missile silo that is open to the public with an inactive missile inside. Lia got to be the Commander while I was the Deputy Commander, and we got to turn the keys for a simulated missile launch.

After our explorations, we stumbled across a farmer's market and spent some time looking around before grabbing a late lunch and spending the afternoon relaxing.

The next morning we had some crepes for breakfast before heading to the biosphere.
The biosphere is interesting for a lot of reasons. It took a lot of work and brainpower to construct a space that encloses everything that the Earth has inside a relatively small area.
I'm linking a video of the biosphere because it'll explain what its been used for a lot better than I can.


The biosphere was really interesting, but the tour guide we had was less than satisfactory. She kept going off on tangents and didn't really know what she was talking about. Other than that, it was a very interesting day.

On a side note, since it's so nice in Arizona right now, I can go on bike rides! I would freeze my fingers off if I attempted to ride at this time of the year in Illinois.