"Uncle" Matt's Visit

The last several days we've enjoyed a super visit from a very good buddy of Stephen's from college days... Matt. It had been quite a while since they had been able to spend much time together and it was Clara's and my first chance to meet him. We had fun times, hanging out, relaxing, and taking a two night trip to the mountains. Thanks for making the trip out here, Matt!

Matt got here Wednesday and on Thursday we all headed up to the mountains for a little "camping trip"...in a nice clean, comfy rented condo. :-) Here's Clara relaxing at the condo:



That first night we went hunting for a place to make a fire and cook our "silver dollars" (ground beef, diced potato, carrots, onion, bell pepper, and garlic salt wrapped up in tin foil and cooked in the coals. Yummy!). We finally found a place and made a fire and cooked our supper in the rain! What an adventure!

The next day we headed off to the petrified forest / painted desert and saw some neat sights! I don't have any close ups of the petrified logs... but we may see if Matt can email us some of his and then try posting them. Here's some other pictures from that day:




THE PAINTED DESERT!






PETRIFIED LOG "BRIDGE", RE-ENFORCED WITH CEMENT.






FUNNY GUYS!

That evening we did some more scouting for possible future camping trips! Here are some pictures from the neat lake camp ground we checked out.











It was a very enjoyable trip! And Clara did a great job being in the car for a long time... three days in a row!



It was lovely and cool up in those mountains and it was nice to get away for a while! We came back on Saturday. Matt took off this morning and Stephen's vacation is now over and back off to work he goes.