Our Roadtrip to Pinetop, Snowflake & Payson

Javier had to work March 5th & 6th in Snowflake, so all 5 of us went up to stay in Pinetop (it's only 40 minutes away) for 3 nights. We also stayed in Payson on the 4th night to make the drive home on Sunday less straining on everyone, but this post is not about Payson...it's about Snowflake!

We had a fabulous time in all 3 cities, Pinetop and Snowflake were absolutely freezing with temps in the 40's and icey wind gusts making it feel at least 10 degrees colder. It rained early Friday morning in Pinetop and Sunrise Ski resort reported 1 foot of snow from that little storm! Even though these temps are pretty cold, we really welcomed them since temps in Phoenix had reached record highs (90 degrees in March is too much!).

Here's a hint about what we saw in Snowflake:

and...

That's right, it's the Snowflake Temple. Friday morning I dropped off and picked up Javier from his meeting in Snowflake. While we were there, we drove to the Snowflake Temple and the local Stake building. The Snowflake temple is gorgeous, it sits upon the tallest hill in the city and you can see it from anywhere in Snowflake. We couldn't go inside-even the visitors center was closed. I'm not really sure why it was closed on Friday, but if I had to guess I would say it was due to the temperature and the wind blowing so incredibly hard that the wrought iron gate surrounding the temple was shaking vigorously and you could hear the loud clanking from inside our van.

Anyway, I took a few pictures of this awesome building...Front View of the Temple

This is etched above the enterence.

Side view

Gorgeous Golden Statue

They have a new community of houses surrounding the Temple and some of those houses are gigantic and right next to the Temple, like this house down the hill. What you see to the left of the temple is all 1 house! What a great neighborhood!

Then we drove to the biggest Ward/Stake building we have ever seen! This building sits right on the main highway which runs through the city...check out it's hugeness:

Sorry about the glare, but isn't this building huge?! It appears to be 2 stories!

I love the country feeling it sends out!

These amazing statues are situated on the front-right side of the Stake building and they represent the LDS settlers who first arrived in Snowflake (and surrounding areas)...Brother Flake and Elder Snow.

I snapped a photo of the plaque in front of these statues that explains the history of how Snowflake was founded and by whom. Perhaps you can zoom in to read it, I found it pretty interesting...

We had a grand time on our trip and we feel so happy that we could experience our first viewing of the Snowflake Temple together as a family. Our kids thought the buildings and hills were awesome, but it will take a little more time for them to fully understand how magnificent the Temples really are. We feel so blessed that they will have these memories to tap into when they do come to realize what it all means.

What a Happy Weekend!

What did you do?

Beautiful Pinetop, AZ

We left Phoenix and it's 101F weather for beautiful Pinetop, Az on Friday August 15th. Yeah, we're all so accustomed to the hot, muggy weather Phoenix provides us during these L-O-N-G summer months. Granted, the best part of our hot, muggy weather is the Monsoon storms we hope for, but it's not until you arrive in much cooler weather that you realize you deal with quite a bit of heat. Though the total drive is around 3 hours and seemingly long with 3 kids in tow, traveling to the White Mountains brings with it some great scenery and tranquility. So, I decided to take a few pictures while my Love drove (okay, I may have been a little bored, but nonetheless, I got some fantastic photos!).This sunburst (though, not as cool a sunburst as Sara's pic on their way home from Durango) is what orginally prompted me to pick up my camera and from that moment on, we saw several beautiful things along the way.

A storm is a-brewin!

I'm not the most knowledable person when it comes to birds and their "tell-tales", however I do know why they fly in circles, as we saw a group of birds doing beneath these clouds (note: the bird where the two colors of clouds collide). They take advantage of the different thermals in the air and fly almost effortlessly, which makes sense that these birds were flying in this pattern while a storm was approaching. To us, it was a "tell-tale" that a storm was in fact on it's way.

Also, we noticed off in the distance was a hazy sky beneath the clouds, which almost always indicates rainfall (as you can see in the 1st photo). With those 2 indicators, we figured we definitely would have to drive through this storm.

"What fun!", I thought, "we get to drive through a rain storm!"

Luckily, the rain wasn't so bad that we had to pull over (although, it was raining 'cats and dogs,' as I grew up hearing), therefore it was indeed an extra fun drive. Have I mentioned I love monsoon storms?!

Here is one of our favorite views from the top of the Mogollon Rim...while driving. Majestic!

I'm sure I'm not enlightening anyone in regards to the Mogollon Rim and it's awesomeness. However, when I did a Yahoo! Search for it, I came across a Coconino County website referring to their campgrounds and info. On that website there were a couple of photos I thought were mighty nice so here they are:Javier told me the Mogollon Rim stretched pretty far, but I had no idea how far until I read this!

This is by far a better picture than anything I can take while doing a drive-by photo op...

Okay, getting back to our trip:

If you squint really hard, you can see a steeple of a LDS church to the left of the road. Here is another sunbeam, which appears to be shining right towards the church itself. Now, that is enlightening (these are the jokes people)! I thought this picture was pretty neat.We saw about 4 different rainbows on our way up to Pinetop...boy were they everywhere. It was difficult, however, to get a photo of one that you can see fairly well. This photo is the best one of the several rainbows we saw and photo'd. Hopefully you can see it behind the row of houses and vegetation.

Something I find pretty cute is I have had some interesting conversations with Marley reguarding rainbows (the 2nd one was for sure during this car trip). For example:

Marley: "Mommy, can we go to the pot o'gold at the end of the rainbow?!!!"

To which I replied: "Marley, I'm sorry, but that's just make believe, there's not really a pot o'gold at the end of any rainbow...trust me, I wish there was".

Sidenote: As a kid, I can remember going with my sister down the dirt road alongside the canal, in search for that magnificent pot o'gold. We ended up running out of energy before every finding the end of the rainbow...so I knew, for a fact, that there is no such thing as a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. (sigh)

Then, Marley asked: "Can we slide down the rainbow then?" I said: "I'm sorry, that's only on Mario Kart (one of the funnest games ever!); a rainbow would never be able to hold us, it's not solid".

Ahh, the innocence of childhood :)

In fact, it had begun to hail by the time we got to Pinetop. And can you believe the temperature dropped 47 degrees from the time we left Phoenix to our arrival in Pinetop?!!! I couldn't believe my eyes:

Home sweet Home er, Condo:)

Here is our view from the front door:

On our way home, I captured this view of the Mogollon Rim (yes, again). And low and behold, it rained again on our way home. Have I mentioned I like storms? :)