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! :)

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.

Natural Bridge Caverns IS definitely worth the money! It made us want to drive back to Cascade and ask for our money back. :) Wow is all I can say. We took the Northern Cave Tour. I thought it would be fitting to have a picture of the “natural bridge” so you can see where it gets its name.

The tour guide we had was VERY knowledgeable and explained the differences between all of the rock formations and how they are formed and even where the coloration comes from on some of them. Here is a picture of one of the stalagmites in the first large room we came to.

I honestly cannot remember what all the different types of formations were so I will let some of my favorite pictures speak for the beauty of the cavern.

I had a hard time paring it down to only 6 pictures from inside the cavern. It was absolutely beautiful. Next time we go through we will have to stop again and go on the Jeremy Room Tour. After we finished with our tour we bought the kids some bags of dirt that had rough gems in it. Then we went to their sluice and picked out boxes so they could slosh the dirt around and uncover their gems. They had a lot of fun finding the gems.

We are stopped in Fort Stockton for the night. I-10 is very desolate in this area. We drove for hours without seeing any signs of civilization. We were going to go to Carlsbad but we have decided to save that for next year’s trip west. I’m not sure what we will be doing tomorrow other than catching up with school. Our next planned stop will be for a few days in Tombstone, AZ.

Cascade Caverns is NOT worth the money. I suppose we should of guessed this when this is the sight we first looked at while waiting for the tour.

The kids found some things to entertain them while we were waiting for our tour guide.

Once we went into the cave it was beautiful but the tour guide we had was not well educated about the geological aspects of a cave. He pointed out things like this rock looks like a turtle, this one looks like Snoopy….

Here is a shot of one of the first areas of the cave.

You are not allowed to touch the walls or the water because it is a living cave. Here is one spot that you can touch since you walk on this section.

Here is a section of formations that they call soda straws. I actually managed to catch a picture with water dripping.

Here is a picture of a different section of the roof of the cave.

The last part of the tour the guide was talking about how they had found bones from a mastodon in the cave. I am hoping he misspoke but as he was showing us the remains of the tusk he stated that the bones had been there for 2500 years. I think he is either way off on his math or they aren’t bones from a mastodon. Here is a picture of the tusk remains.

Hopefully tomorrow’s tour at Natural Bridge Caverns will be better.