Exploring Arizona

It has been a lil while since I've had a chance to update this...and even longer since we've shared pictures! I have been busy with teaching, tutoring and Rolly Pollies and Rob has been flying Monday-Friday. We are both always ready for the weekend :)

Last week, Rob went flying with a guy from work he's become pretty good friends with--Logan. The company he works for bought a small plane that they're allowing their employees to rent at a ridiculously discounted rate and Rob had promised Logan he'd take him up as a thank you for switching out a lot of days over the holidays. They flew over a bunch of cities --Prescott, Flagstaff, Sedona. I didn't realize this before the flight but there's a big volcano crater in the middle of the desert and Logan told Rob that it is responsible for the weird landscape out here (all the mountains and the super flat desert). I really know less about this tourism flight than I thought and Rob is flying helicopters right now, then will want to sleep a lot the rest of the day so I'm just going to throw up the pictures and maybe he'll add more detail later. :)

the crater (obviously)

these are the controls in the cockpit of the plane...it's an all-glass cockpit, which I guess is pretty cool :)
also, I can't figure out how to write below this next picture, but it is Rob and the plane in Flagstaff, with Humphrey's Peak in the background.
Here are a few pictures of Sedona from the air...

Yesterday we went hiking at Lost Dutchman State Park. Rob helped me pick out a new pair of hiking shoes a few weeks back and I was excited to try them out! The top of the mountain is about 3,000 feet of climbing and I think we made it about 1,800. Rob took me hiking at the same mountain almost a year ago when I came out to visit last February and I made it farther than I did then. Sometime I'd like to make it all the way to the top, but there's a lot of climbing and areas where there isn't much to hold onto to pull yourself up, so I'm going to need a lot of practice. Also, going down is probably harder and scarier than up. Good thing Rob is patient and helpful!

Another lil fun fact about our hike...last year when we were there we took a lil break and were chatting and that's when I started talking with Rob about how I really didn't like my job and wanted to be a teacher. We visited my "life crisis" rock again this time. :)

New hiking shoes! Apparently hiking in wool socks is best. They are the tallest socks ever. Not so much of a fashion statement!

We are almost to the spot we turned around at here.

Okay, I have errands to run and big plans of reading a lot of non-fiction by the pool today so I am ready to grade a lot of non-fiction book reports in a few weeks :) This 3 day weekend thing is wonderful. A short week and Mom comes to visit at the end! Sending you all love (and some warmth!) Love, Sarah and Rob