Swimmin and Divin

These kids love swimming and they both have gotten pretty good at diving this summer.

Kartchner Caverns

So Kent and  his friend Kent (Evensen) decided to ditch their conference classes one day and go on a field trip.  We went to the Kartchner Caverns, a huge cave that was discovered in the 70's.  These cave people were SERIOUS about making sure that the cave formations didn't ever get damaged and were preserved perfectly. They were so uptight that we even had to walk through a huge, humid tunnel so we could absorb moisture from the tunnel and not absorb the moisture from inside the cave.  They FREAKED out if you so much as set a toe off the paved trail (literally, they said that they spray the walkway every night with water to clean off the dirt and anything off the path doesn't get cleaned and could damage the cave.)   They also did not allow cameras in the cave. It was pretty crazy.  But the cave was cool.

Kent Evensen

They would never let people get this close to real cave formations so they had some fake ones in the lobby you could take pictures with.

Tucson Trip - SUG

It was Kent's turn to go to the Sunquest User Group (SUG) conference this year so he decided to take me with him again.  This time the conference was in Tucson. We got to stay at a 5 star Marriott resort.  When we checked in all the rooms with a King sized bed were taken-- so the desk agent did some checking on things and ended up putting us in a special room.  It is part of a 2 room suite where the first room is a regular room and it adjoins with the suite part (which we had).  The room was literally the size of 3 rooms.  The only drawback was that it had a Murphy bed which had to be pulled down from the wall every night.  It was worth it though to have such a HUGE room!  We also had our own private balcony.

Our own private balcony (which we didn't use much since it was over 100 degrees every day)

Our huge room.  This doesn't show the kitchen, the office/desk area and bathroom.

The view from our private balcony.  Nice.

Some interesting desert plants and wildlife.  Note the enormous bug in the top left photo.  We were out walking one night and a huge bug like that flew right into my forehead and then landed on Kent.

More Yellowstone

One thing I have to note about Yellowstone was that even though everything looked really cool, it SMELLED!  Rotten eggs.  Adele actually said she like the smell.  I think she's the only one who enjoyed it.  The rest of us kind of just tolerated it because the pools and geysers were really cool.

Yellowstone with Gma and Gpa

Last summer we tried to go to Yellowstone but it was too early in the year and when we went up to Idaho for the trip it was snowing in Yellowstone. This time we planned to go in July because we figured we had a better chance of warm weather.  The unfortunate thing about going in July was that there were a bunch of tour busses full of tourists, and there were tons of people everywhere.  That seems to be the trend with just about all the national parks.  Which is unfortunate.  We were pretty lucky to be able to go on this trip with Gma and Gpa.  They are experienced with the park, and Grandpa is starting to slow down.  In a couple years he might not have the stamina for a trip like this.  Even the longer walks were a bit too much for him, so he spent some of the time resting in the car.

Floatin Down the River