Summer Rewind Part I

As we all know, Fall is upon is. It may be "upon" more people than others seeing as how it was over 100 degrees today. But as I'm (trying) switching into Fall mode, I got to thinking that there's some fun things that happened this summer that have gone unblogged.

So I thought to myself, "self, you should have a summer rewind and blog about all the things that in their current state of affairs, remain unblogged."

So, I declare the next series of posts, none-other-than... a summer rewind.

Kinder Creek 

My parents and I did this hike last summer (you can read about it HERE), and enjoyed it so much that we made our return this summer and brought along my hubs, my sister and her bf, and of course Mace and Guns...the dogs that is, not the weapons

Although, you might count them as weapons considering Maycee has a pretty ferocious growl and either one of them can slice your leg off with their high powered tails.
Either way...they were pretty excited to get their hike on. You could tell by the way they kept trying to sneak into the back seat...

It's a good thing grammy was sitting there and not their dad. It probably would've ended differently.
Just sayin'.

Kinder Creek is north of Payson, and as we all know, anything north of the Valley in the summer time is a good decision.
So off we went!

 

My sister's bf Adam

It didn't take long before Nate found the first sign of wildlife.

Behold: the horny toad.

The first place we stopped at was taken last year, but this year we were fortunate enough to get there first and got the whole beach to ourselves! The dogs ran like bats outa hell when they saw the water...you know, the usual.

My sister and I

 

Once Nate and Adam noticed all the crawdads in the water (and by noticed, I mean was continually pinched on his feet) some serious crawdad fishing ensued.

While the crawdad fishing was happening...another thing was happening. And we like to refer to it as Xena's Olympic Swim.

Xena doesn't really swim. But she ran out of options when she realized the beach quickly descended and her little paws didn't touch the bottom anymore!

 

That's one proud mama.

And one traumatized chihuahua.

After a while we decided it was time to pack it in and move to the next spot. By this point the crawdad fishing had really caught on and we were on a mission...a dinner mission. We even made make-shift fishing poles with beef jerky to use as bait.

Crawdad's didn't stand a chance.

 

The final count for the day...yes these bottles and bags are filled with crawdad's!

Maycee wanted in on the whole beef-jerky-on-a-string thing

Dad doing his photo thang...

I hate love to brag about AZ because most people who don't live here think it's nothing but dirt and heat. And while the latter part of that is true, most people don't realize just how awesome it is and all it's hidden gems. All we had to do was drive 2 hours north to be in this place and enjoy such a perfect afternoon. We even got drizzled on as the monsoons and the clouds came in and out all day.

Can't wait to come back next summer!