Family outing

This past Saturday was the first that Geoff has been off in months. (Seems like there was one some time, but few since this semester started.) We had a big family day in Camp Verde. (Who would've guessed???) Here, our family of 5 stands atop a hill that is at the corner of two major roads trying to "stealthily" find a geocache (which we eventually did, but not without attracting quite a bit of attention). There is also a letter box in this same general location which the kids and I found a while back, at rush hour with quite an audience parading by.The geocache was in route to the Fort Verde History of the Soldier event, which would explain the girls' attire, in case you were wondering. They don't regularly go out in pioneer garb, but in a moment of temporary sanity it occurred to me that this might be a great place to wear it. They received several compliments and fit right in!How many give-aways can you spot that reveal the true time period of this photograph?Here the girls' are stationed at their favorite part of the event: Little G's favorite was the automatic weaponry. Great. But he got to listen to and ask a lot of questions of a WWII vet about a machine gun that was on display that was priceless. Unfortunately, no picture.

Some of the earlier American "soldiers" parading.

They announced that a Navajo man was going to be speaking about the code-talkers, which little G has been interested in, but for some reason it didn't end up happening.

This was something else that little G was pretty interested in - an old shovel from the salt mine. It made us all think of Mike Mulligan...As can be seen in the previous two photos, the lens cleaning we have attempted has not resolved the problem as of yet. Will have to get the cloth out and scrub at that thing a little more.

Now we are off on the next part of our day, which was finding another geocache at an old salt mine. We never knew about this till we saw it on the geocache website. Great little historical site and fun adventure. It was good to go now. It will be too hot before long, but was about right this day. Bunny was there, but guess who ended up carrying him.

A hill of salt.

Found the cache! (No rattlesnakes.)

On top of a hill of salt.

It made unusual formations and made the dirt into unusual shapes as well.

Some deteriorating mining equipment.

Climbing a mountain of salt and dirt, and hunting for interesting crystal formations.

Being herself in the car afterwards.

We came upon an access to the Verde River and stopped there for a bit, then finished the day off by meeting Grandma in Camp Verde for dinner! It was a great day, marred only by a lengthy wait on the highway on the way home due to an accident (during which of course 2/3 of children had to use the bathroom, so daddy hightailed them into the woods and made it back to the car just in time for the traffic to start moving). When we passed the scene, it was very sobering, and kind of subdued us all.