Okay, so we got to Quartzsite, Arizona late, and by the time we had the motor home set up, it was too dark for any photos… but I got up while it was still dark, and went on one of my patented ‘adventure walks’, just to get you some good pictures of the first sunrise… that is how much I care…

I took that picture after I came back down that mountain. In case it looks like just a small hill to you, the red arrow is pointing at a full-sized saguaro cactus… which is like almost 30-feet-tall… up near the top. Also, that hill was steep, and covered with loose shale, slippery rocks, cacti, rattlesnakes, scorpions, and, once again, I climbed it in the DARK! For you!

I know… you think I am exaggerating. That picture shows how close I came to walking right in to a saguaro. I was halfway to the mountain before the sun even began to lighten the sky.

Oh, and it was really cold, too.

That is the first picture I took from the top, which proves it really was very dark. Okay, technically, I didn’t go all the way to the top. That is because I like including Mollie, our 16-year-old, on my adventure walks now, and she wasn’t there yet, so I saved the last hair-raising scramble over slipper rocks so I could bring her with me, and let her experience the joy of that crazy climb, and I didn’t want it to be just me taking her somewhere I had already been… I wanted to share that moment of reaching the crest with her… I know… I am that sweet and awesome.

Just so you know, an adventure walk is something I invented years ago. Whenever I travel, I get up before the sunrise and just start walking. I am very good at finding something interesting to see and do on these walks. I try to do something that is a little dangerous so I have an interesting story to tell. It doesn’t always have to be in the morning. When I do the post about Mollie and I climbing this same hill, it will be me and her racing the sunset so we don’t have to go down the mountain in the dark… which would have been at least as crazy as me climbing up it in the dark for these pictures.

I can’t explain the feeling of being there as the sun started to rise. There are some things that have to be experienced. Oh, and I apologize for dropping off the grid for four days. We were ‘dry camping’… which means no electricity, no fresh water, no place to drain the holding tanks, and no internet… so… sorry about that.

I hope you like the desert… because I have a lot of pictures, and you are going to get to know the feel of the American Southwest if you read all these posts.

And I know you are all anxious to hear about my other daughter getting engaged, and about the day I petted 68 dogs…

But we will get to that later… that photo is from the top of the mountain, looking back at where we were camping. Yeah, I walked through that wasteland… in the dark… for you.