And we we’re Splishin’ and a Splashin’!

 

 

My daughter’s Girl Scout Troop raised enough money from cookie sales (thanks to everyone that helped by buying cookies from my girl) to plan a fun event. Everyone decided they wanted to go to a water park, but didn’t want to drive too far due to the cost of gas. So it was agreed that we would all spend the night at The Radisson Hotel and Water Park in Albuquerque!

I’m sure all of you who are experiencing enough rain to float an ark, probably won’t be too impressed with all of our water play, but to us here in New Mexico, water is gold!

On Friday afternoon we checked in and immediately donned our swimsuits and spent a few hours splishin’ and splashin’ and just having a grand ol’ time!

Jax and Jem came along and had fun zooming down the two water slides, one which was a tube slide and one which was a body slide….and actually did most of it’s twists and turns *outside* of the building! And I really liked the Art Nouveau theme of the water park.

 

Jen’s favorite place was the kid’s play area, which was shallow and packed full of sprayers, squirters and big buckets that dumped water on us.

 

Jax and Jem also spent a lot of time in this toasty warm pool, shootin’ hoops and navigating the rope across the slippery floating shapes.

Jen became a happy fish and smiled the entire time we were there!

She and I really enjoyed the indoor/outdoor hot tub which had a fun little door to swim through to go in or out. But she spent most of her time sliding down the two slides in the kid’s pool.

I went down those two slides a few times, too and quickly understood why Jen couldn’t stop smiling. That was so much fun!

I have never seen her smile this much.

Jax, Jem and I took many trips around the Lazy River. I loved it! So relaxing!

I didn’t even mind these “flower Petals” dumping water on my head as I floated beneath. Although it did get a little annoying, and kind of funny, when my tube would get stuck in an eddy below them for a couple minutes. If only the water had been as warm as the river itself.

The blue slide is the tube slide and it also travels outside for the last half of the ride. I almost went down that one, but I couldn’t get my courage up. My left knee and my hips don’t always feel secure and I didn’t want to risk it.

This looks a whole lot easier than it really is. lol!

 

My twinlings were off having so much fun that I was quick to grab a photo when they did check in with me.

I was happy that they were interested in being my photography subjects so I could practice taking action shots in a dark environment. They took some fun surfing lessons on the Flow Rider. This is another ride that looks a lot easier than it really is. But the more often they did it, they did seem to get better at it, even in such a short time.

Go Jax!

 

I need a whole lot more practice taking action shots in an indoor, light-challenged environment and experimenting with different settings. Hubby thinks I just need a better camera. Hmmm….

Go Jem!

We played at the Water Park from 3pm until about 6pm. Then came back to the room for some snacks and drinks. I took a shower and got dressed, and then we all headed back over to the water park to play until it closed at 10pm.

I was glad I wasn’t swimming on Friday night because it was much more crowded then and there were a lot of teenagers and the vibes were rather rowdy and loud. My kidlets still had a great time while I took photos and tried to stay dry.

I really enjoyed seeing how the water park was all lit up at night, almost like a disco. They play music all the time, but at night it’s more exciting because of the dancing different colored lights.

I was also excited to take on the challenge of more action photography in low lighting.

Jem looked kind of sleepy in this photo. It was almost 10 pm and we had been swimming and playing for almost 6 hours by this time. The Lazy River could easily put a person to sleep, too.

But the noise level kind of prevented the ability to fall asleep…..

I like how, in this picture, everyone is blurry, except Jax.

I was easily entertained with photographing all the sculpturally interesting water works.

I was mesmerized with the way the light shone through the bright colors and sparkling, flowing water.

And the spinning water squirters were even more fun and challenging to photograph.

These leaves drip water onto those floating on the Lazy River……very cold water. I avoided them, or at least tried to.

I enjoyed them much more as a photography subject.

 

After we closed down the water park, we drove down the road and had dinner at Sonic, came back to the hotel, took showers and went to bed. Did I mention the Radisson had Sleep Number Beds? Mmmm…..nice.

And then the next morning, we had a little breakfast and then threw on our swimsuits again and headed over to the water park around 9:30am. I didn’t take any photos because I spent the entire time either soaking in the hot tubs or floating in the Lazy River.

We jumped out about 11:30am, went back to our hotel room, took showers, packed up the van, and then checked out at 12pm(the check-out time the hotel gives to water park guests. Nice!)

What is extra awesome about all of that, is that it only took us 30 minutes to drive back home. Don’t ya just love those quick, little, relaxing and fun vacations?

It’s just what we all need sometimes.

On A Whim

 

This is what happens when you decide to do something on a whim…….  

 

 But more on that later.

For now, let me tell you about my twinling son Jax’s lacrosse game up in Santa Fe on Friday night.

Go Jax!

 Jax plays lacrosse for Sandia Prep High School and had an Away Game to play against Santa Fe Prep High School, so we drove up Friday afternoon.

Go get ‘em Jax!

 

Sandia Prep played a good game, but in the end, they lost to Santa Fe Prep 10-1.

 

We still cheered loudly for Jax and his team. And we enjoyed ourselves sitting outside in the warm sunshine, even though it was very windy. 

 

Santa Fe Prep High School had some very big guys on their team.

 

 Jax did a great job playing Defense.

 

Ouch! There are times I wish I didn’t have zoom. Thankfully Jax seemed to stay out of checking range and remained injury free this game. Whew.

 

The game seemed to last a long time……. 

……because we had plans for the rest of the weekend, we couldn’t wait to get started……..

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So what does this photo have to do with making plans on a whim? 

 Well, that’s the inside of our pop-up camper. And that’s my twinling son, Jem, curled up inside that blanket.

And yes….that’s my daughter Jen cuddled inside her sleeping bag…….and my little Dobbie girl inside my sleeping bag.

 

This was my Dobbie Girl’s first time camping in our pop-up camper. And considering that she was kept in a cage in a backyard breeder’s shed for the first two years of her life, we were all surprised with how well she fit in to the camping life.

This is actually not her first time camping, though. She went camping last summer in our tent when we camped with my twinling’s boy scout troop up in the Jemez Mountains.  

 

My twinling son Jax chose to sleep in one of our tents instead of inside our pop-up camper. He really seemed to enjoy having his own space and roughin’ it, too.

 

And this is our little pop-up camper. We’ve owned it for over 10 years now. We used to camp at least a couple times each month, most of the year, but somehow life got in the way after we bought our little ranch, and our humble home-away-from-home, sadly, just sat around for the past 3 years un-used.

Jen was thrilled to be camping in the pop-up again. Her first time camping in our pop-up was when she was only a couple months old.

 And that’s where the whim part comes in.

Friday morning, Ranchman John came up with the idea to load up our camper, the kids, Dobbie, and our camping gear and, on a whim, go camping up in the Santa Fe National Forest after Jax’s lacrosse game.

So that’s what we did.

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We camped in the open electric section of Hyde State Park about 10 miles above the city of Santa Fe at 8,550 ft elevation. Good thing, too! Because of that “whim thing”, I didn’t have time pack any food. So after setting the camper up, we drove back down to Santa Fe, did some grocery shopping, picked up a couple green chile pepperoni pizzas and headed back up into the mountains. How cool is that?

We were also very lucky to find a camping spot, considering that we didn’t get up to the camping area until after 7pm. All 7 sites were full except one, and we got it.

It was also such a relief to be camping in between the mountains in a canyon as there was no wind at all, and it was actually quite warm, even though there were piles of old snow left over in shady places.

The road that goes past the camping area also goes right up to the Santa Fe Ski Area, and it was the last weekend for skiing before the Ski area shut down for the year. So, there was a bit of traffic during the day on Saturday and Sunday, but we were pretty busy hiking and letterboxing, so it wasn’t bothersome.

We found a letterbox beside this creek and the trickling sound of the water was very peaceful.

 

And of course I had to take some family photos, too. 

 What is it with boys making head horns?

 

This was a cute letterbox we found called Slice of Life.

 

Isn’t that fun?! The letterbox container is a Wonder Bread box. And the hand-carved stamp image was a slice of bread……with the word Yum! lol!  

 

A little later we went hiking in Black Canyon Campground and had to use my computer to find a letterbox because the clues were entirely of photos. Our printer is on the fritz, so I just brought my computer along instead. Good thing noone else was around, though. I think we looked rather funny hiking with a computer. lol!

That snow you see in the photo was just an old leftover patch in the shade of the trees, inside the canyon. The weather was actually very warm, almost hot. Ranchman John’s truck’s temperature gauge said it was 78 degrees on Saturday afternoon.

 

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After doing some hiking and letterboxing up in the mountains, we drove down into Santa Fe to do some more.

It’s kind of neat to see the mountains that we call home when we are over 50 miles away. Those farthest shadowy mountains in this photo are the Sandia Mountains. The smaller ones in the center are the Cerillos Hills and the mountains to the left are the Ortiz Mountains.

 

We found a letterbox and placed one of our own letterboxes near the Cross of the Martyrs, overlooking the city of Santa Fe. Ranchman John, a history buff, was fascinated to read many of the plaques here and learn that Santa Fe is over 400 years old. This memorial is dedicated to the memory of 21 Franciscan friars slain during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

 

 I played around with angles and I like the composition of this photo very much.

We ended up finding 6 letterboxes and placing one on Saturday. And after eating a hearty and delicious lunch in Santa Fe, we drove back up into the Santa Fe National Forest to our camper.

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While I prepared a dinner of sloppy joes inside, the rest of the crew relaxed outside.

 

Then they all played lacrosse and enjoyed some snacks.

 

 

They really had a great time. And we got a kick out of several cars that drove by(on that road behind Jax and Ranchman John), on the way down from the Santa Fe Ski Area, when they honked and cheered after seeing the guys playing lacrosse. 

 

We ate dinner and had a fun evening. We slept like hibernating bears, comfy and warm. We woke the next morning, enjoyed a delicious breakfast, packed up the camper and headed home.

The strong winds hit us just as we left Santa Fe, but instead of driving south on I-25 we drove home on the Turquoise Trail NM 14 and, for the most part, avoided getting blasted off the road. An hour later we were home and glad to be here, but had already started planning our next camping trip.