Day 15 was another lazy day, playing with rocks and swimming and playing cards. Kendrah went to work with Gramma for a time, too. My car had been in the shop since we arrived to get the oil changed and the brakes fixed, and it was done about the time dad's car started acting funny. So we took the opportunity to get his car in the shop while I could drive them wherever we needed to go, which happened the next day. It was another day to go out and play, and we headed to Jerome, AZ. On the way we stopped at the hang glider launch site dad had taken me to last year and I wanted to show the kids.

The pitch of the ramp into oblivion is very steep. Dad is not about to throw Quin off, he's hanging on to him and keeping them both safe. Really!

On the way back down the mountain, I stopped to capture this butterfly chowing down on the flower's nectar.

Jerome is an interesting place. On one side you have the ghost town and the other side you have the tourist town. You are welcomed to spend money on either side. We hit the ghost town first.

While tempted, we did not spend any money here.

The bees and the hummingbirds loves the feeders out front of the main shop in the ghost town. We opted to not take the tour and instead just looked around on our own a bit, before moving on to the tourist side.

We wandered the streets and in and out of shops, photographing things of interest and buying postcards.

Quin was being exceptionally unhappy today so I couldn't resist laughing when I saw this book. I don't think "Vacationing" was on the list, but it should have been on Quin's.

Somewhere along the way, Quin set down Ribbert and didn't pick him back up. Which made me unhappy.

But I didn't notice, either and we moved on to the copper shop. Jerome got it's beginnings as a copper mine site so copper still plays a huge part in the tourist aspect.

I really liked this piece, and saw the price tag as $15. I told Dad I'd be more tempted if it was $5 instead. He looked closer at it and said, "That actually is $45, I think." We looked at it again and realized we were both wrong. This piece of copper, which was about 12" tall and maybe 10" wide was really marked $95. We decided if I thought $15 was too much, we'd pass on paying $95, although I do think they are really cool.

The one with desert scenes were awesome, too, I didn't even look at the price.

After browsing and doing a bit of drooling, we moved on to a mine site with historical interest.

But the real draw was the 1,900' deep shaft that had a glass cover you could stand on. Oh yeah, baby. 1,900' is DEEP!

And I mean, really deep!

This was a plaque that showed how deep it was compared to some famous landmark buildings around the world. It's deep.

I might have mentioned that.

The rusty metal items intrigued me and I started thinking about which photos I'd want to make a puzzle with.

My mom looked like she was in jail, but she was so happy to see us it's hard to tell.

Quin had to pose:

After that we made our way home again. I got a picture of a flower in their yard.

But flowers can't hold appeal for long when there's a pool nearby.

It got really dark in the pool room and then it started raining so hard it sounded like a herd of elephants dancing on the roof. The thunder and lightening (and sometimes rain) had been hitting off and on the whole time we were there, but this time it was a monsoon. I had to go outside and get a picture of the river flowing down the road.

The next day, Kendrah went back to work with Gramma, and dad took Quin and I plinking. We loaded the gun, ammo and target and headed off into the boonies.

The gun was too big for Quin and it was fun to see him try to hold it and shoot it.

But he hit the target, as did dad and I.

The tree was also hit. That was fun! We shot till the gun jammed and then we gathered the spent shells, target, and all our other stuff, and packed it out.

We stopped to get a picture of some water.

Then, since it was our last day to be able to do so, we hit the pool after mom and Kendrah got home.

Tomorrow we'll be leaving mom and dad's house and heading to Nevada and California via Death Valley.

Day 13 of our road trip wasn't a road trip kind of day, but a day we stayed at "home", playing with the rocks we'd collected the day before, which involved cutting some, polishing some with a sander, and tossing some in the tumbler. The kids enjoyed cutting the rocks up in my Dad's shop, especially Quin who spent several hours at it.

The next day was another out-n-about day. We decided to visit Montezuma's Well and then continue on to see some weird things in Sedona. We had hardly even got out of town before we stopped for a geocache near this funny frog rock.

Then we stopped to photograph what is supposed to be the world's largest kokopelli. The roads made it too complicated to get close so this was the best I could do. I cropped out the Starbucks sign that seemed to tower over it, because the kokopelli really was huge. Unless you had that to compare it to.

After that we found our way to the Well. It was blistering hot but we made the trek to the Well and most of the way around it in order to get the information we needed to claim the earthcache there. It's a fascinating place. The well is the only water around and over 1.6 million gallons of water flows through it daily, but no one, even scuba divers, have been able to determine where the water is coming from. Ancient Indians created irrigation systems from the well for their crops.

They also build homes between the water and the ground.

And maybe they had better success at catching lizards than Kendrah did.

Remember that frog rock we stopped at earlier? We saw this one -- even without paint it reminded us all of a giant bullfrog. Can you see it?

The kids and I needed our pictures taken as part of the cache requirements. It was hot and they weren't too agreeable but we managed to get a few shots. This is us trying to look like we're having fun.

We actually were, it was just too hot for them.

The paddle cactus struck my fancy, the way it grew in a line along the top of the rock, without touching it.

Here's another view of the underground structures.

And a shot of the irrigation ditch.

Then it was time to move on to other sites and sights.

Sedona is pretty famous for the red rocks all over the place. It was also pretty green!

We stopped at a Ranger Station / Visitor's Center and killed some time in the A/C building, watching a movie and doing a scavenger hunt.

And letting Ribbert go for a ride on some statues.

One of the rocks we were searching for was the coffeepot --

And, closer:

We stopped by a viewpoint near the airport that gave us a lovely panoramic view of the town and surrounding rocks.

Quin found some green rocks and needed to pose by them.

By then, it was seriously time for a special treat for our mouths instead of just having them for our eyes. We stopped at the Red Planet Diner and placed an order for root beer floats and milkshakes.

Then, time to hit the road again! We took this trail to a huge sinkhole that had collasped. There were caches to find and amazing things to look at!

Sedona is home to the only McDonalds in the world that does not have golden arches. Here, they are teal blue and we just had to stop and get a picture of it.

On the way back home, we stopped at a roadside shop that was a rambling conglomeration of interesting things. I think this is a place you shop when you want something that no one else has, or for something as a gift for someone that has everything. It was a fun, eclectic assortment of decorative items, mostly displayed outside. My camera had a great time, so I will show you a tiny bit of what I saw there.

Don't act surprised at this next photo. You know he couldn't resist.

The inside of the pots was almost as interesting as the outside. There were stacks of these pots all over the place.

Funny thing about this buffalo horns marked $10 each. There was another basket nearby with buffalo horns that were polished and trimmed and beautiful that were marked $9 each. Huh.

After spending a lot of time there it was time to head back home, catching a couple more shots before leaving Sedona.

Time to go swimming!