Focht Family Blog

It is hard to believe that Joshua is already 3!! My mom and I took the kids to Chick-Fil-A for lunch and we also took them to see the new Veggie Tale movie. We had a lot of fun and the kids enjoyed it. After we got back to the campground I baked Josh a cake and decorated it with a Diego cake topper I bought from a grocery store bakery.

Next came the presents. Josh loves Diego so it was the theme of the night. His first gift was a talking Click Camera.

He also received an Animal Discovery Laptop. It has pictures of all of the animals he has learned about watching Diego with information on them.

As you can see, he enjoyed playing with his new toys.

We will be leaving San Diego tomorrow. We did manage to get California on the map as well as putting on the map of Canada that we finally found. Nathan says that now it looks like we haven’t been to many places.

We made it to California. We stayed our last night in Arizona in a Cracker Barrel parking lot. That was a new one for us. We checked into our spots at Campland on the Bay on Thursday. It is basically a big parking lot. Friday morning mom’s friend Tom met us at Campland and rode to the San Diego Zoo with us. The first exhibit we wanted to make sure we saw was the baby Panda bear. The baby is only out from 9-11 so that was the first stop. Here is a picture of the baby Panda up in the tree and one of her mom eating.

After lunch we went to the children’s zoo. Here is a picture of the kids on an iguana bench. Samantha made the mistake of trying to sit on the head first and she hurt the back of her leg with the horn. :)

In the children’s zoo there were a lot of those pictures that you can put your heads into. We found one with three holes so here are my little sunflowers.

In the children’s zoo there was an education section and they had some meercats that were in a small exhibit where they had glass sections you could watch them through. The kids had a lot of fun at this exhibit because the one meercat kept running around in front of them like he was trying to find a way out. Here they are watching the meercats.

After the children’s zoo we explored a few areas we had missed in the morning. Here is a picture of an animal that scaled rocks like it was walking down the road.

Then we went to cat canyon and looked at all of the big cats. It was a bit disconcerting that the Puma kept following our kids wherever they were in front of his cage, especially in light of the events at the San Francisco Zoo. Thankfully they had ceilings on all of the cages. Here is a picture of a Jaguar. We thought it was a Panther that had been put in the wrong cage but when we read the information on the sign it said it is not unheard of for a Jaguar to be dark brown to black.

The last picture I took was too cute to pass up. It is an anteater with a baby anteater on her back.

All in all it was a great day. We went to the grocery store after the zoo which was a large task to find a parking lot we could fit in. Then we went out to eat at Olive Garden with Tom before he left to go back home. Today is just going to be spent doing school, laundry and haircuts. Nothing exciting! :)

Today we are leaving Tombstone. Yesterday was a day of spotting wildlife. Nathan went out to walk Misty in the morning and was about 30 feet from a coyote. Then later that day we saw roadrunners around our campsite. This thrilled Timmy because he has been wanting to see a roadrunner since we passed into Texas. Then as the sun was beginning to set I spotted a skunk in the dog walk area. I did manage to get a picture of the skunk but it wasn’t very good. However, the sun setting over the mountains was absolutely beautiful, so I took some pictures of our last sunset in Tombstone Territories RV Park.

Today we will be taking our time. We will check out of here by 12:00 and then we have a few places we want to stop and shop in Tuscon. We will spend the night at a Walmart somewhere in AZ. We wanted to go as far as Yuma but they do not allow overnight parking there. We have reservations in San Diego starting Thursday but check-in isn’t until 2:00 so we will be able to take our time getting there.

Yesterday we just stayed around the park. I thought I would post a picture of the kids from the first night. They had a beautiful pinata that was a ball with cones all around it. I have never seen a pinata like this. The kids all took turns with two other children from the park hitting it and the whole shell finally fell off and left the paper ball in the middle, still unbroken. Here are the children with two of the broken off cones.

The next morning they had the opportunity to meet an African Gray that is in one of the neighboring RVs. The kids enjoyed seeing his tricks.

Then we went to the pool in the afternoon. It is heated and in a room that blocks the wind. Unfortunately I should have taken a change of clothes with us because although the pool feels great while you are in it, it is extremely cold when you get out. The temperature dropped a little while we were swimming and the wind picked up quite a bit so we froze on the way back. Here are the kids on their way to the pool.

Today we went to Tombstone. At first driving into the town we were a bit disappointed because it didn’t look like an old town. But then Nathan found the touristy street. Here is a picture of one of the stage coaches that you can take a tour in.

We ate lunch at Longhorn. Virgil Earp was shot from the second story of the building. It used to be the Bucket of Blood Saloon. According to the plaque on the door, the original building burned down and this building was rebuilt on the site so it isn’t the actual building where Virgil Earp was shot from.

After lunch we were trying to find something to do while waiting for the OK Corral reenactment at 2:00. So we went on a mine tour.

We all had to put on safety equipment before we could go into the mine.

This mine was active for 9 years. They mined silver and mined $3 million worth with only candles and chisels. The mine is still full of silver ore and also copper. He said the price of silver needs to go up another $10 an ounce to make it worth the money to continue to mine the site. Everyone enjoyed the tour but it was a bit too much excitement for Josh.

The next stop was the OK Corral. The group that was performing today did some skits that showed several different sides of life in the era before showing the reenactment of the shootout. Here is a picture at the end while both groups are lined up right before they started shooting.

The final picture is of the three dead performers laying in front of their tombstones with the other actors behind them. The Earps and Doc Holiday were in front of the saloon and I didn’t get a picture of them.

The funniest part was when Josh was waving goodbye to them and William Clanton waved back to him while he was supposed to be dead. :) After the OK Corral we went to Walmart and bought a metal detector for the kids that Nathan is going to take them out tomorrow to use. Unfortunately Misty has a cut on her pad and also has a stomach virus that medicine doesn’t seem to be helping so we will also have to find a vet tomorrow. When we came back to the RV she had gotten on our bed and their was blood on our bed as well as a bloody path from one end of the RV to the next so we will have to figure out how to get all of the blood stains out tomorrow as well.

This morning we woke up and started back on the road. We stopped in New Mexico before the Arizona border and drove to Stein’s Railroad Ghost Town. It was extremely small and was closed until January 24. So back on the road we went. We drove to Tombstone Territory RV Park. They have huge sites and advertise that no rig is too big so we actually have both of us on one site. We paid for our site and then you pay for your electricity separately when you leave so they didn’t care that we are using both the 50amp and 30amp plugs.

As soon as we parked we got out our stickers and put Arizona on.

I think we are just going to rest and enjoy for today and tomorrow. They have a heated pool and a jacuzzi so we will probably do that tomorrow. Mom is happy because they have a book exchange. Tonight at 6:00 they are busting open a pinata so we will take the kids to that. It seems like you are in the middle of nowhere out here but it is beautiful and we have views of the mountains all around us. Here are some pictures that I took outside of our site.