Granddaughter Week, part 2.

We also took our granddaughter to Wildlife World Zoo.

Wildlife World Zoo & Aquarium is a 215-acre zoo and aquarium in Litchfield Park, Arizona, United States, near Phoenix. The zoo specializes in African and South American animals, and has Arizona's largest collection of exotic animals.Wikipedia

We took the wagon because it's a big zoo and knew someone would get tired...

I was able to get some pretty good pictures of the monkeys through the glass. These guys were very entertaining!

Kiera was more fascinated by the strange monkey in the corner of this enclosure!

I really don't think you are supposed to pet the exhibits but this bird wanted Doug's attention! It was very sweet.

"Where's dinner?"

I love the meerkats! You can take pictures and caption them all day long!

One of the beautiful finches.

This was funny! Papaw wanted a picture of Kiera next to this duck on the sign. She wasn't entirely sure the duck wasn't going to come after her!

Kiera even took turns pulling the wagon..... However, 

She had finally had enough!

 Well, until we told her we would take her on the log ride.

A great way to cool off on a hot day!

Next, we went to the aquarium! (nice in cool in there!)

This was only the 3rd record breaking day of heat in Arizona!

This piranha was back lit so couldn't resist a picture!

This alligator seemed very interested in what was inside the wagon! ;)

Although it's hard to tell in the picture, the fish was bigger than Kiera!

Grandma showing Kiera how to feed the stingrays (she didn't want to)!

Papaw got splashed when he did it!

Kiera was watching the other stingrays and didn't notice this one coming up to her. It touched her hand and she freaked!! "I touched it's eyeball!" (they are slimy). We told her that she had only touched it's "nose". :D

Last shot of the day was Kiera feeding the fish.

We had a blast with our granddaughter and are waiting for our next visit with her!

Granddaughter Week, part 1.

It's the beginning of summer and we had our granddaughter for a week! She is 5 (going on 6) years old and is a joy to have! Most of the time... ;)

We took her "treasure hunting" (geocaching). She loves doing it but she did have to learn she had to trade items. She has her own cache bag too!

Here she is helping papaw with a cache.

Caching makes for a very educational time for the granddaughter too! Although this snake is not poisonous, it gave us the opportunity to show our granddaughter that you always need to watch!

Which also included this guy! The shadow you see is a javalina! We were lucky he was only interested in being in the shade! We skirted him, he skirted us!

Geocaching can sure take you to some interesting places, like this very large culvert! You had to walk from one side to the other to get to the cache. Our granddaughter loved the echos!

Our granddaughter didn't want to go with us on this one, our 400th find!

Our 300th Find!

Doug and I set out to find more geocaches. We started on a series that gives a history lesson on the area.
We were close to our 300th cache so we wanted to reach that goal this trip.
We didn't realize how special this one was going to be!
When geocaching, you never know what you are going to find. The cache of course, but they come in different sizes and have different contents! Some are so small, all that is in them is a log. (you put your caching name or initials on the log)

You may just find things that aren't cache related:

This was the second set of jaw bones we found.

We were close to our 300th when Doug saw this cache on his list. We didn't have any idea...

Not only was the cache super special, a puzzle, the property where it is located is owned by Linda & Bob Smith (fellow geocachers). If it was not for Linda coming out and giving us a few clues, we would probably have given up!

With Linda's help, we didn't loose our marbles and was able to unlock the cache and sign it!

Linda and Bob also have miniature horses! Come to find out, they knew several people that we did!

Linda with one of her little guys!

This guy wanted Doug's attention!

One of their horse shoes inside a regular horseshoe!

This was a great cache and the owners were pretty great too!

More Geocaching

I may have mentioned this, but Doug and I love to Geocache!
Our latest trip took us, again, to places that we would not have even known about if we wasn't geocaching!

 Luckily, we have a vehicle that will take us to some of the more, shall we say, isolated caches!

 One of the interesting things we saw was this memorial to a young man who passed away way too soon. We didn't find the cache here but it was still worth the look.

This time of year, there are still wildflowers to stop and enjoy.

Just don't ask me what there are! 

This cache was called Twisted Roots so it wasn't too hard to figure out where it was.

An interesting part of our caching trip took us along parts of General Crook's Trail.

One place was the Devil's Windpipe. This is located north of Camp Verde.

The views were breathtaking!

Doug thought I needed to be in a picture! ;)

Juniper Berries!

A very pretty little pond.

Lots of wildflowers!

And though I usually don't care to see these critters, especially rattlesnakes, this bull snake (I think) was across the road. Doug had to get out and shoo him off so we didn't run him over. He wasn't very happy with Doug! 

General Crook's Trail was definitely interesting!

The sunset on our very fun day!

Having fun with the moon!