Rachel's First Camping Trip

Boy, what a great time we had this last Memorial Day weekend! Mom and Dad took Rachel camping for the first time up in Flagstaff. We packed the car and headed for the hills right around noon on Friday -- just around time for Rachel's nap. We made good time up to Flag (despite the heavy traffic getting across town), and settled into the Bonito Campground near Sunset Crater right around five o'clock. In retrospect, maybe it wasn't such great time -- we had to stop for a significant break in Camp Verde after Rachel woke up. I guess we won't be doing any nonstop trips to Flag again for quite a while.

We bought a nifty 3-person tent for the occasion, as well as a cute little mummy bag for Rachel to sleep in (or under...or on top of...or next to...there was a lot of moving around). She loved the tent, so much that it ws hard to get her to sleep at night. She was having too much fun rolling around on the bags and playing peekaboo.

It ended up being pretty cold the whole time we were there (about 15 degress below normal for that time of year), so we kept Rachel pretty bundled up the whole time. She wasn't very happy with the cold, but did really enjoy wandering around the campsite. She was entranced by a dog at a nearby campsite, and would frequently wander over to get a closer look. She wouldn't get too close, though, and got scared when the dog came over to check her out. Another big source of entertainment was throwing the frisbee around. She even got the hang of it herself: she'd up the frisbee, carry it over to one of us, and toss it a foot or so.
We had originally planned on hiking at least one day while we were up there, but the cold weather drove us into town. We played at the park, flew a kite (it was really windy), went to the bookstore, and visited our friend Ruth (and her dog Rugby). At some point I snapped a neat picture of a lenticular cloud formed by Mount Humphrey. Our campsite was right underneath the cloud, which explains why it was so cold there.