A Bad Day Camping Is Better Than A Good Day At Work

After our stay in Phoenix we took off for Prescott with hopes of meeting up with our friend Ellery.  We ended up having only a short afternoon visit with her, but it was so great to see a friend from home out on the road.  Ellery gave us the quick tour of Prescott College, we enjoyed a few beers at the pub, and swapped road trip stories and “must see” places for our return trips.  There was a little bit of snow in the mountains of Prescott, so we decided to drive a bit further south to camp for the night before heading to California.

Our next stop was Joshua Tree National Park–a place we had been to a few years ago when Joanie was working as a Bald Eagle Observer for Arizona Game and Fish.  It was nice to see a somewhat familiar place and reminisce about the flat tire and flat spare that we got the last time we were here.  Luckily, we didn’t need to deal with that again, and we headed out to parts of the park that we hadn’t seen before.  Most of the campgrounds are neatly tucked behind and among the granite rock formations which provided hours of entertainment.  Scrambling, climbing, and jumping around the rocks is always good fun–especially when you’ve got the place to yourself.  The perfect weather continued, we explored the northwest corner of the park, and then started to realize that the first leg of our trip was almost coming to a close.  We’ve been having so much fun driving across the country, seeing new places and eating incredible food, that we almost forgot that we were going to be flying to New Zealand in a week!  And, best of all, we had another visit with friends to look forward to–along with the sun and surf of San Diego. Ahh, the ocean…at last.

We’ve been staying with our friends Ryan and Karin in San Diego for the past week, and it’s been really nice to be back near the coast with some good friends.  We spent our first full day out here learning how to windsurf in Mission Bay.  Ryan and Karin are incredibly patient and effective teachers and we were quickly standing up and sailing around the bay (with a few falls and dunks along the way!).

The rest of the week has consisted of plenty of good food and leisure sports such as croquet and rock golf, a Ryan Fritzsche original.   We really feel so lucky to have good friends across the country who welcome us into their house and put up with the small piles of stuff that we drag along with us!