Andrew Goes Camping

The Drew Monster absolutely loves camping. I think its biggest appeal to him is the ability to get filthy dirty with little to no effort.

Because of the fire danger in Arizona this time of year, we weren't able to have a campfire, so Drewbie missed out on that camping experience. And he didn't seem to like waking up confined in his playpen rather than in his bed, but he calmed down pretty quickly and fell back asleep in my arms, so it all worked out.

We were up in the Tonto National Forest around Payson. It's a beautiful drive up the Beeline Highway from the swanky eastern Phoenix suburb of Fountain Hills. (We actually drove through Fountain Hills one day, but the World Famous Fountain--it's apparently the third largest in the world--wasn't on at the time.) The main purpose of the trip (other than seeing how the Drew Monster took to camping) was to go to Tonto Natural Bridge State Park. It's a small little park with a couple of quick but steep treks to get under an amazing bridge carved out by water. It had been threatening to storm the entire time we were putting up our tent and walking down under the bridge (yes, Red Hot Chili Peppers was running through my head a couple of times that afternoon), but it waited until we were safely under the large stretch of rock before cutting loose. So we and several other folks sheltered under the bridge while it poured rain and thundered all around us. Drew figured out that dropping rocks into one of the pools under the bridge was great fun indeed and heartily demanded "Moe!" whenever he ran out of rocks nearby. It was a very nice excursion.

Mark and I were just tickled that Andrew enjoyed camping so much. We're already looking forward to our next camping trip, which will probably be in September or October/November.