We're at the airport waiting for our flight to start boarding. I forgot there is free wireless internet here. I'm fairly certain we'll have internet everywhere we go on this trip so, hopefully, I'll be able to make fairly regular updates.

Mr Moo forgot to put his pocket knife in one of the checked bags and nearly had it confiscated again. Fortunately, PDX has a kiosk where you can mail contraband back to yourself. Pocket knife is now in the mail and on its way back to our house. My knife is in my suitcase so we won't be totally knife-less this trip. You never know when you'll have to fight off attack scorpions or something.

We are in the air and on our way. I'm still kind of in shock that we arrived at the airport, checked out bags, went through security and boarded our plane without coming across a single person we wanted to smite. Normally, there's at least one person saying/doing something incredibly stupid or acting all entitled and whining. We should travel on Wednesday afternoons more often.

Our flight to Phoenix is going to be a quick one - just over two hours. It was schedule to be 2 hours 40 minutes, but I guess we've got a good tailwind going on. I'm all for getting in a bit early because we still have a two hour drive to Tucson to do once we land. We could have flown all the way to Tucson, but we would have had to layover and change planes in Phoenix. Since that would have taken an additional three hours or so, we decided to abandon ship there and do the drive ourselves.

Chillin' on the plane with my Bose noise-canceling headphones and my netbook.

Driving from Phoenix to Tucson.

We're hanging out at the Best Western this morning. We have to check out before noon and move over to the Residence Inn today. Because the internet connection here is fairly decent and Mr Moo has some work to finish up, we're staying here for a while longer. He claims we'll be heading out in the next 20 minutes or so, but I'm not holding my breath.

I spoke with my sister this morning. She's at home trying to finish up their packing so they can be on the road by 1500. They're driving up to Charlotte, NC, to catch their flight. If I remember correctly, they'll be landing here in Tucson at about 2130.

We've had a busy, but kind of lazy day today. Just like I thought, it took Mr Moo longer to finish up what he was working on than he said it would. However, we did check out of the Best Western with plenty of time to spare and headed down the road to the Residence Inn. We're renting what they call a "penthouse suite" over here. On the bottom level, there's a full kitchen, a living room and a bedroom with a full en suite bathroom. Upstairs, in the loft, there is another bedroom with another full en suite bath. For all intents and purposes, it's a furnished two bedroom apartment. Plenty of room for all four of us.

After leisurely unpacking and a quick lunch, Mr Moo and I headed out for a while. We went to the visitor center at Saguaro National Park to pick up some maps and brochures, and get information about hiking from one of the park rangers. We're hoping to climb Wasson Peak tomorrow. After that, the rest of the weekend is open. Since we had a lot of time to kill this afternoon, we decided to head into the park and drive a tiny bit of the Cactus Forest Drive. In the little while we were there, we saw two roadrunners, a rabbit, a flicker (woodpecker), chipmunks and a whole bunch of quail. Something tells me we aren't going to have to search hard for wildlife on our hikes. The ranger said there have been several mountain lion sightings in part of the park we're hoping to hike. Hopefully, we won't be running into anything quite that big. I'll stick with the quail, thanks.

After our short visit to the park, we headed over to Target then the grocery store to stock up on supplies for the rest of the weekend. No one will be going hungry here! On our way back to the hotel from the store, we were passed by several police vehicles. Every time we started to go, another one appeared. They looked to be blocking off the road up ahead of us, so we made a u-turn and took the back way back to the hotel. Even heading in the other direction we saw several more police cars. It looked like they were setting up a perimeter around the entire block to catch a suspect who had fled down a concrete flood channel. It was like driving by an episode of Cops.

We're back at the hotel now and waiting patiently for my sister and BIL's flight to arrive. Their first flight left over an hour late. I got a txt not too long ago that they had jogged through the airport in Dallas to get to their second flight and were starting to board. However, it's now 2040 and, according to the airline website, they haven't even left the gate yet. If they can get in the air soon, they should be landing in Tucson right around 2300. That will be an hour later than originally planned, but better late than never.

Today, we drove to the half of Saguaro NP located on the west side of Tucson and attempted to summit Wasson Peak. "Attempted" being the key word in that sentence. We all agreed that we should have gotten up before dawn and been on the trail at daybreak in order to do that hike. We ended up at about the halfway point in the worst heat of the day. Even though we were drinking tons of water, the heat was just too much. After stopping to have some lunch, we took a vote and decided it was in our best interest to head back down. Mr Moo, who is half mountain goat and, apparently, half cactus, continued on and finished the climb by himself while my sister, brother-in-law and I started back down the car. To give you some idea how good of a hiker Mr Moo is, he summited the mountain, spent some time at the top taking photos, hiked back down and arrived back at the trailhead only an hour behind the rest of us. We were very disappointed we didn't get to finish, but staying safe is definitely more important. Even though Mr Moo got to see the best ones, we did get some incredible views on our abbreviated hike and enjoyed spending the time together.

Since we had a few hours of daylight left and weren't sure if we were going to make it back to the west side again, we did a few Geocaches in the area. One of them was at the top of a small hill, which seemed like another mountain since we were all so tired by that point. On our way up, my BIL officially became the first of our group to be attacked by a cactus. While taking a photo of a teddy bear cactus, another one snuck up behind him and got him in the ankle. Ouch!

As the sun went down, we made our way back into Tucson and to the hotel. My sister, who had promised to cook every night, was the quickest to agree when I suggested we just pick up some food for dinner. We were all shattered and suffering from heat stroke so quick and easy was best. We picked up some chicken and sides from Boston Market. After devouring dinner, we went for a swim. Our hotel had a heated pool, which, at first, we thought was ridiculous given that it's located in Arizona. However, after the sun went down, it got quite cool and we were glad for the warm temperature. As a matter of fact, it would have been nice if it had been even a bit warmer. After some time in the hot tub and showers, it's time for bed.

One of our favorite things about our hotel is the fact that a full hot breakfast is included every day. Most hotels will offer complimentary coffee and continental breakfast (toast, cold cereal, fruit, etc), which is what we were expecting. We were very pleasantly surpised when we went down to the breakfast room yesterday morning to find eggs, sausage, pancakes and loads of other items. Needless to say, we're loading up every morning before setting out to hike for the day.

Today, we visited the east half of Saguaro NP. We hiked the Garwood Trail down to and returned on the Carrillo Trail. I believe it was just under six miles total. When you factor in the heat, however, it feels like sixty. It was a very interesting hike through the cactus forest, through a canyon, and up and over a ridge, which gave us some fantastic views of the valley and surrounding mountains.

A couple miles into the hike, we stop at a rocky outcropping to have a snack and take some photos. My sister and BIL travel with a little stuffed lamb. I was going to take a photo of the three of them when, much to everyone's horror and dismay, we discovered he was missing. A few frantic minutes later, we realized he was still sitting atop a cactus about a mile back where we last stopped to take photos. It wasn't a question of whether we were going back for him just who was going. Since they could make the best time and catch up easier, Mr Moo and my BIL took a couple bottles of water and headed back. My sister and I finished up our snacks and continued on.

We came to a short side trail within a few minutes and decided to check it out so we wouldn't get too far ahead. On our way back to the main trail, we decided to walk down the wash rather than on the trail. We're glad we did because we found a couple interesting things. The first was a snake. Not long before, I was lamenting that I had seen any snakes, scorpions or other interesting creatures. Then, as we were making our way down the wash and I was just about to leap over a large puddle, I looked down and there he was. Luckily, it wasn't a rattlesnake because I was practically standing on top of him and I would probably be dead now. I'm not sure of the exact type, but it was definitely some type of garter snake. We spent a few minutes with him taking photos. I think my sister even got one of my touching his tail.

Just a little further down the wash, we came across an even more interesting find - frogs! In the desert! There was a shrinking pool of nasty yellow water left in a hole on the rocks that make up the bottom of the wash. As we walked over to get a better look, something jumped into the water. We couldn't believe our eyes when we got closer and saw 12-15 frogs hanging around the hole. As I got really close to the hole, all of the frogs freaked out and jumped into the water all at once. It was quite a sight.

We had been keeping in touch with the boys with the walkie talkies in our GPS receivers. Right after our amphibious encouter, we saw them coming over the ridge towards us. We stayed put and had them come down the side trail so they could see the frogs, too. Since it was a nice flat cactus-free area (finding someplace to sit without getting spines in your butt is not an easy feat in the park), we stayed and had lunch. Just as we were getting ready to leave, a man came walking up the wash. We stopped to chat with him for a few minutes. He was looking for animals to photograph. He told us the frogs we saw were leopard frogs and also showed us a tiny empty tortoise shell he had just found. He seemed to know quite a bit about the animals in the area. I wish we had had more time to talk with him.

The remainder of our hike was comparitively uneventful. We struggled to get up another ridge (I slipped on the trail and nearly broke my wrist), but the views of the valley at the top made it all worth it. It was quite a steep hike down on the other side to get back to the trailhead and the car. As we were going down, we saw a bunch of people struggling to hike up, including one bra-less tank top wearing woman, who, apparently, was so focused on getting up the trail she didn't notice her boob was just about falling out. We laughed about that one for quite a while. At first, we couldn't understand why were suddenly seeing all of these people on the trail since hadn't seen anyone else all day. Given how late it was getting, we figured they were probably heading up onto the ridge to watch the sunset. As we continued heading down and watching them struggling up, we got more and more grateful we had gone the long way around. We got to the top of the ridge gradually rather than climbing up the cliff side. Not sure we would have made it had we gone the other way around.

Our hotel isn't far from the east side of the park so we were back in no time. My sister cooked lemon chicken and rice for dinner. Afterwards, we drove over to Coldstone for some ice cream. Yummay! Mr Moo brought back Monsters Versus Aliens on DVD when he went out to run an errand last night so we watched that after ice cream. By the time the movie finished, we were all more than ready for bed. Goodnight.

Happy Birthday to me! After the last two days of strenuous heat stroke inducing hiking, we decided to take things "easy" today. We drove around the loop road in the east park and stopped at all the overlooks. We couldn't go without doing some hiking, so we did a short three mile jaunt through part of the cactus forest. My two aunts called while we were hiking. It's amazing to think how far technology has come when my aunts in Massachusetts can call and actually reach me in the middle of the Arizona desert to wish me a happy birthday. My sister was hoping to see some javalinas on this hike, but no such luck. We did see some mule deer and an abandoned copper mine though.

After the hike, we finished driving the loop and checking out the overlooks. Even though we had hiked through miles of it already, we continued to be awed every time we stopped. Everyone knows what a saguaro cactus looks liked. We've all seen them a million times before, but seeing them in person and seeing so many of them is surreal. The park is a truly beautiful place, barren desert and all.

At the end of the loop drive, we did a quick hike to an old abandoned homestead (still can't sort why anyone would choose to be a pioneer there in the desert) and stopped at a picnic area so my sister could see the quail we spotted on Thursday. Amazingly, they were still there. They looked to be hanging out under the picnic tables pecking at the crumbs, which was probably a feast for them.

We didn't do much after returning to the hotel. We had bought eggs to make breakfast before we knew the hotel provided it. Mr Moo cooked them up for dinner so they didn't go to waste. Later, he snuck out to the store and bought some cake, cookies and ice cream for my birthday. He even bought candles, but we didn't have any matches to light them. Oh, well. I pretended to blow them out so I could still make a birthday wish. At one point, everyone had their laptops out so we could transfer our photos back and forth. We had to laugh when I set my itty bitty netbook next to my BIL's behemoth laptop. He put mine on top to compare and it literally is less than half the size of his. I still don't know how he carries that thing around.

We have to take my sister and BIL to the Tucson airport first thing in the morning and we need to be on the road to Phoenix for our own flight not long after. Time to pack up a bit and get to bed.

We're officially on our way home. I'm typing this from an altitude of about 35,000 feet. We had a busy day today. Right after breakfast, we dropped off my sister and BIL at the airport. I was sad to see them go, especially since we don't know when we'll see them again. We always have a good time and a lot of laughs together so I hope it's sooner rather than later. After the airport run, Mr Moo and I went back to the hotel to finish packing and get checked out. There is no recycling at the hotel (Booo!), but the ladies at the front desk offered to take our cans, bottles and paper home and recycle them for us. We were very relieved because we didn't have enough room to bring them home with us and we definitely didn't want it all to end up in a landfill.

We were on the road to Phoenix right at 1100, which was earlier than expected. Since we had time to kill, we decided to make a detour to the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument near Coolidge, Arizona. The monument is, basically, the remnants of a large ancient building (pre-1350) and the surrounding grounds. It's the largest structure known to exist from the ancient Hohokam people. We went through the museum in the visitor center and walked around outside a little, but, unfortunately, we only got to stay for about an hour before we had to get back on the road for the airport.

We struggled a little to find a gas station once we arrive in Phoenix (why isn't there a million of them by the car rental place?!), but we finally found one, returned the rental and made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Phoenix airport was incredibly quiet and we didn't have to wait in line anywhere. Gotta love traveling on weekday afternoons! Our flight is a return. The crew flew down from Portland and turned around to head right back. They arrived in Phoenix a little early and, for once, everyone got right on board so we got to depart a little early. I believe we'll be landing right around 1940, which will get us home at about 2100. While we had a great time in Arizona, I'm looking forward to seeing green trees and grass again, and getting home to see Josie. There really is no place like home.

The pilot just announced we're starting our descent into Portland so I better shut down.