Capture the Fun, Not the Pose

There is a time and a place for posed pictures.  I take lots of posed pictures.  But don't limit the pictures of your kids to just perfectly posed portraits.  You will miss the fun and miss the memories.

What do I mean by that?  Rachel and I were playing at a park while her big brother was at a hockey lesson.  She decided to play hide and seek.  I tried oh so hard to find her but eventually she had to give away her hiding place.  

I love that I captured her expressions that seem to say, "Oh mom!  Surely you knew where I was!" and then "That was fun!  Let's do it again!"

I caught those two pics with a quick shot from my cell phone then I went back to playing.  I love those pictures 100 times more than if I had her pose with a fake smile in front of that tree.  Those pictures captured the fun we were having and will remind me of that fun morning with her each time I look at them.

Rachel and I were each exploring the area and I called to her when it was time to go.  She came running across the bridge and I saw her pretty hair shining in the sunlight so I caught this quick picture.  Look at the happiness on her face!  That isn't from a boring posed picture.  This picture is alive with movement and joy.

Finally, when I commented to her about having taken some cute pictures of her, she decided that she wanted to pose for me to take her picture.  She came up with the location and pose and this is what I snapped.

It's a cute picture on a bridge with some nice trees in the background but it is sterile to me.  There are no special memories attached to this picture and it doesn't let my daughter's personality shine through.

Keep this in mind next time you are taking pictures of your loved ones.  You have to take the obligatory posed picture from time to time but remember that candid and unposed pictures are so much more rich with life.

Route 66: Petrified Forest National Park {Arizona}

Our next stop on path of the Route 66 was the Petrified Forest National Park.  This is the only National Park along Route 66.  I knew I wanted to stop here because my happy place in on a trail in the woods so a forest sounded like a wonderful place to explore.  However, I didn't actually read about the park until we were on the road.  My, what a surprise we were in for!

There is no actual forest at the Petrified Forest National Park!

In fact, it is often called the Painted Desert due to the amazing color striations on the rocks and the desert-like landscape.

So why is it called a petrified forest?  Well in prehistoric times there was an actual forest here.  It is unknown if this forest died of natural causes or it was the fault of a catastrophic event.  Either way, the trees died and were washed away and buried in sediment which protected them from oxidation and decay.  The wood absorbed the mineral-rich water and silica in the ground and eventually crystallized into quartz.  As a result, the landscape of the Petrified Forest is scattered with logs that have been petrified and turned into rocks.

These rocks are a beautiful rainbow of colors telling the history of this area.

Researchers have found other types of fossils in the park including ferns, reptiles, amphibians, and even dinosaurs.  I would have loved to have learned more about the park but we were on a time crunch and couldn't stay in the visitor center to watch the movie about it.  We had to get out and explore!

This is inside a petrified log!  Isn't that amazing!

Reds, whites, yellows, black.  And it all has the texture of a rock, not wood.

We walked around and climbed on top of lots of petrified wood.  The park is 230 square miles and we only saw a tiny bit of that but it was impressive and fun to explore.

The map of the park shows the main points of interest where visitors would want to stop and explore.  There are paved trails to follow if you'd like.  We had about 40 minutes to see the entire National Park before it closed so we picked a few spots that sounded good and just hit those.

One of our stops was at the Crystal Forest.  Again, no real forest here but you can see where the living trees once stood.  

The bark of the logs has a different look and feel to them because they have now turned to quartz.

But the real difference is seen when you find a log that has been sawed through so you can see the inside of it.  It's just amazing that this colorful rock was once a living tree!

As beautiful as these rocks are, you are not allowed to take any pieces of petrified wood from the park.  But don't worry.  There are plenty of gift shops outside the park that are happy to sell you a piece of petrified wood harvested from nearby areas outside of the park.

This is my favorite close-up picture of the petrified wood.  I just love all of the beautiful colors of crystal.

Our last stop was at the Giant Logs Trail.  This spot has the largest logs in the park including "Old Faithful" which is the largest.

Old Faithful is 10 feet across at its base.

I just had to include this sweet picture Nicholas caught.

Ok, maybe this picture is actually my favorite.  It is just so beautiful.  

I found this color chart on Wikipedia which explains the elements that contribute to the different colors of petrified wood:

• carbon – black
• chromium – green/blue
• cobalt – green/blue
• copper – green/blue
• iron oxides – red, brown, and yellow
• manganese – pink/orange
• manganese oxides – blackish/yellow

Some of the other points of interest in the Petrified Forest National Park that we didn't have a chance to see include:

• Route 66 Alignment - a 1932 Studebaker marks where Route 66 once cut through the park.
• Agate Bridge - features a 110 foot long petrified log bridge.
• Puerco Pueblo - visit ancestral Puebloan home remains
• Newspaper Bridge - see over 650 petroglyphs.

Yes we missed all of this!  I would have loved to have seen it.  The main problem was a lack of planning and poor navigation on my part.  There are two entrances into the Petrified Forest National Park.  As we were traveling east on I-40, we should have taken the exit for 180 and entered the park at the southern entrance.  We would have arrived sooner and had more time to spend in the park.  We could have then followed the main road all the way north until it exited again on I-40 and we would get back on our merry way heading east to Albuquerque.

Instead we missed this important fact and traveled much farther to get to the entrance on I-40.  It may not seem like a big deal since we need to keep traveling east on I-40 when we leave the park anyway.  But the problem is that when the park closes, the park rangers drive down the road from the northern entrance and force everyone to go out of the southern gate.  Not only does this mean that we had to race to the southern part of the park so we would be the last to get kicked out and could squeeze a little bit more time into our exploring but this also meant that we lost that distance and time spent driving to the I-40 entrance and ended up repeating that drive again when we got pushed out at closing time.  

Oh my goodness!  Missing that exit at 180 cost us probably 1 1/2 hours of drive time!  Unfortunately that meant that we were really tired when we finally made it to Albuquerque around midnight, especially Stuart who was doing all of the driving.

Earlier in the day, we had decided that we needed to make it to Albuquerque by evening because we needed to make it home by tomorrow night. While on the road we were making calls to hotels in Albuquerque trying to make a reservation for the night....because this trip is happening entirely without a flight plan. We quickly learned that there were two big conventions in town and every single hotel was booked.  We looked at driving about an hour north to find a place.  Fortunately we finally found a Holiday Inn on the east side of town that a few rooms left (apparently the conventions were more on the west side of town).  Happily we took the room and when we arrived to check in there was a sign on the door letting others know that they had no rooms available.  Whew!  We were so grateful to have made that reservation instead of just rolling into town to see what was available.  Ok, so maybe a little planning ahead is a good thing.

Next Post for Road Trip 2018:

• Pimentel and Sons, Albuquerque, NM

Previous Post for Road Trip 2018:

• Route 66: Standin' on a Corner in Winslow, Arizona

Spring Break: Arbor Hills Nature Preserve

For Day 3 of our Spring Break Fun we went on a nature hike at Arbor Hills Nature Preserve.  I think the last time we were here was for a Family Bike Ride.  I used to take the kids here a lot when they were younger and we had more free time.  Rachel was about 2 years old when we enjoyed the Fall Colors at Arbor Hills.

The terrain here is interesting.   The creek and erosion have worn away the land but I wonder how much of that steep cut was caused by nature or man with some big machinery?



Nicholas and one of his best buddies.  They have been friends since they were itty bitty.  My heart is happy watching these two guys grow up together.

I love the color of redbud blooms, especially against the other bushes that are still so barren and dull colored.

I think these are bradford pear blooms but I haven't seem them in such a pretty pink before so I'm not sure.

We found a Prickly Pear that was starting to bloom.

I think this is Camassia, otherwise known as wild hyacinth.

The kids eventually found a way down to the creek.  I was hoping that they wouldn't get wet until we were at the end of our hike because it was a little chilly but it turned out to be a great spot to explore.

Along the cliff wall that we climb down to get into the creek, there is a horizontal section that is composed of thousands of thin, flat rocks.

It is curious looking to me and I want to know what happened during that time to form such an interesting looking texture in the soil?

This reflection caught my eye.  You can see the rocks of the earth covered in water then on top of that is the reflection of a canopy of trees and above that is sky and clouds.  So beautiful in its on way.

 Some of us explored down to the bridge and back.

But some of our group didn't want to get their feet wet and walking on the rocks was a bit tricky in spots.

So the kids decided to build a raised walking path to help the rest of the group get to the other side of the creek.  They gathered the largest rocks and laid them out in a line to form the path.

Some of the rocks were really big and heavy!

But they did a great job with their building project.  They were little engineers at work!

Rachel never has minded getting her feet soaked though.  She had to look back at me and smile because she knows I'm ok with getting wet and having fun.

We found this hole under the side of the creek bank.  It was a short hole in that it didn't go very far back but I'm sure many creatures have sought refuge there from time to time.

We found some fungus growing on this rotting old tree.

As we headed out of the creek and reached the top of the bank, someone pointed out a giant moth on the other side of the creek.  Do you see it?

Nicholas and a friend crossed the creek to catch the moth in a net so we could get a closer look at it.

Look at how beautiful it is!  Notice what looks like eyes on the hind wings.  That's how you can tell it is a polyphemus moth.  It gets its name from a Greek myth about a cyclops named Polyphemus.

I was impressed that all of the kids, of varying ages, understood how to be gentle with the moth.

Just look at how big it is!  It's wing span is about as wide as Rachel's two hands put together! I've never seen a moth this big in real life!

I'm not sure what kind of spider this is but it may be a Steatoda or "false black widow".  Please leave a comment below if you know what it is.

Rachel found a snail shell.

And there was a cool hole dug in the ground for some kind of an animal hole.  The girls poked sticks in it.

Rachel loves her Camelbak backpack.  It holds a plastic water bladder so she can drink from the tubing anytime she wants without having to hold a water bottle in her hands.

My friend pointed out this piece of root from an osage orange tree that was sticking out of the ground.  I was already familiar with the osage orange tree but I did not know that their roots are actually orange!

More bradford pear blooms.  What a sweet little flower.

Although we were out to enjoy nature, the kids still took delight in watching this front-end loader drive by them on the sidewalk.  There is some construction work being done in the park so they also got to watch a cement truck.

We counted rings on this pruned tree branch.

This area has more of the layered compacted rocks.  It looks like it is a hill that was cut through to make the concrete path.  The rocks and textures along the walls are always interesting to look at.

We were done with our nature hike so I told the kids they could go play in the creek before we headed home.  They like this particular spot where they can get in beside a bridge.

Rachel rolled up her pants legs and looked back at me with that smile that says, "I'm going to get REALLY wet!"

She found several interesting rocks to study.

Isn't this the best classroom a child could ever have?

I could sit out here all day.  This is our Spring Break week but we often put book work aside during the spring when the weather is just perfect like this.  There's no place I'd rather be than out in the great outdoors.

Nicholas brought a small net and was looking for fish to catch.  It was pretty shallow but he was determined.

Meanwhile, Rachel is getting wet and muddy!

We found some raccoon tracks in the soft soil.

I love that my children are right in their element here.

Nicholas found a spot with several fish swimming around.  He caught a nice blue gill and another kind of fish but I didn't get to him in time to take a picture.

They found something that they said looked like a crawfish walking around this rock.  They lifted the rock to try to catch him but he was gone.

Nicholas' third catch of the day with his net.  It's his smallest catch but at least I caught it on the camera.

Arbor Hills Nature Preserve is one of our favorite places to go on nature hikes.  It is located at 6701 Parker Road in Plano.  There are dirt and concrete trails, a bathroom, and a playground.  It is particularly interesting because there are three types of ecoregions in this one place: Blackland Prairie, Riparian Forest, and Upland Forest.