Road Trip: Mesa Days

Friday we woke up with no agenda! A fabulous day of sitting around, watching the kids play. Charlie quickly became enamored with the playhouse in the backyard...

A little too much so perhaps. He fought anyone who denied his claim to the property - even running out naked (after his bath one day) to defend "his" house from an intruder (i.e. cousin and rightful owner). But despite his occasional protests, the house actually was shared some of the time, which was delightful to watch.

Paul has a thing for spray bottles and Sam got into it, too. Really it was so hot that what Sam liked best was taking the spray nozzle off the bottle and just dumping it over his head!
And, no picture to prove it but, Isaac & Claire got on famously. They invented games and schemed together, sometimes skipping around holding hands. Other times, Isaac read to himself or worked on self-directed projects with our trusty road atlas.

Saturday we were spoiled to be able to tour the only Reptile Rescue Sanctuary in Arizona - a private facility that occasionally allows small groups to tour (we tagged along with a scout troop).

It was educational and downright delightful to see and learn about all the wonderful creatures there - even a non-reptile wallaby! [Warning: the rest of this post is more than 50% animal pictures.]

Here the boys are looking into the pond of painted turtles. It was fun to watch them try to climb over each other and fall off, back into the water.

Then came the amazing encounter with the African Spurred Tortoises. We got to go in among them, feed them, even ride them! They are strong enough to hold a grown man's weight no problem but we pretty much left that experience up to the kids.

Charlie wanted to feed every morsel that he could to the tortoises, which resulted more than once in his fingers getting bit. He must not have minded too much.

Next we toured the large area of alligator (and a couple crocodile) enclosures. The alligators must be separated quite strictly by age, and then individually or they will fight and even eat each other. There was one particularly enormous alligator who had recently been rescued from the Grand Canyon. The story was traced to someone who had let it go there 15 years earlier, assuming it would become prey... The poor ranger who finally discovered him!

After that we toured the shelter which housed all the snakes, gila monsters, baby turtles, etc. Here is a supposedly really rare shot of their King Cobra in strike pose (hood out in warning), followed by me holding an endangered species of python. (He wasn't really that close to Isaac's mouth.)

The grand finale was Uncle Mark and Holly swimming with an alligator! This gator had been raised since hatching by the caretakers, but that alone does not make it safe. She was an especially docile gator and her mouth was tightly taped shut... But STILL, don't be mislead. This was a highly supervised activity.

I also got some awesome video but we were asked not to post it on the internet as things like that often are viewed out-of-context and the sanctuary takes seriously it's role to properly educate the public on things like: You can't have a pet alligator! and Don't swim with alligators!!

The next day was Sunday and spent doing Sunday kinds of things: church, eating, reading... We also visited the Mesa Temple and Visitor's Center, but after dark so no pics.
Monday was our last non-traveling day, and back-to-school for the cousins, so we decided to spend our morning at the highly (and deservedly) acclaimed Phoenix Zoo.

What follows is our "Best of" sightings...

And there was a petting zoo, too:

In the afternoon, we hopped in the pool to cool off.

Sam decided he liked exploring under water, and trading wars over cousin's goggles commenced. Looks like at least he will finally be ready to learn to swim next year. (Maybe we'll start lessons after the baby comes this winter.)

P.S. Yes, I know Sam needed a haircut! I've managed to get that done since we've been home.