Up and at 'em around 8am. Jonathan hustled over to the office to double check tonight's cabin rental went through, which it did. All good. Then after breakfast, Jonathan and Ollie went and played some tennis (we brought rackets for the whole family on this trip... haven't used them much, but fun to have).
By 9:30am we were leaving for our day trip to Saguaro National Park, stopping for a diesel fill up on the way over. We went and parked at the Rincon Visitor Centre to get the Junior Ranger Books for the park (each park has its own booklet/badge) and a map of the trails. We explored the interesting visitor centre with all the cool learning areas about the animals and habitats and plants in the area. The kids got to work on their Ranger books while in there, completing the pages associated with the centre.
They continued to work on them in the vehicle was we drove over to the starting point of the Cactus Trail (3.32km to the limestone kilns). For the drive into the park, we gave priority seating to our VIP's! Set up the stool between the drive and passenger seat for Mum to sit on for a better view of the cactus and desert landscape :). The walk was awesome, lots of different cactus on this trail including some very large Saguaro cacti.
After finishing the hike, at 1:40pm we drove to the Javelina Picnic area for some lunch, then did the Homestead Trail (about an hour walk) along a very similar style trail that lead to where a homestead once was many years ago. You couldn't see much of anything left behind, but it was certainly eye-opening to think of people arriving here and saying, "Yeah! this looks like a great place to set up our home!" Oh man, it's so dry and full of spiky and prickly plants. Seemed way too harsh to live here, starting from scratch.
Along the route, Oliver had been trying his best to nonchalantly place his fake Schleich tarantula along the trail to trick Gma and Papa. He tried a few times without success... they kept walking past it. Then, Ollie was ahead and put it down by a large barrel cactus, just in view. Papa was the first to see it and had his camera out ready to snap a picture. "Is that a spider?!" he said, summoning Ollie and Meems over to look. We all crowded around to have a peek, but Ollie and I had trouble hiding smiles and Gma clued in right away that it was a trick. Papa had already taken a photo - success!! Very fun.
After this hike, we drove back to the ranger station and visitor centre around 4:15pm to get our special hiking pins (for doing two hikes in the park more than 5miles total), and for the kids to get sworn in as Junior Rangers.
We drove to Walmart where I went in with the two kiddos to get some groceries. On the way we drove past the military plane boneyard filled with 1000's (4,400) old decommissioned military planes. Row upon row of them. Pretty neat and kinda eerie. When you peeked at the Google Map of it, you could see just how vast it was.
Back at the KOA Tucson, we hung out at the cabin. The kids had a game going where they wrapped Ollie in the sheets and had his halloween mask on. They were trying not to have anyone see them, they had to be hiding or their skin/faces covered in the sheet.
Papa and Ollie walked over to the office to get some firewood (which got delivered by golf cart to the back patio) and Papa cooked veggie burgers on their barbecue out back of the cabin. Dinner was followed by a lovely little campfire and roasted marshmallows. Ollie eventually got quite cold, and went inside and curled up in his bed and promptly fell asleep.
We had paid for the cabin for the night, and just parked the rig behind it for the night and did some undercover "camping" out back. All worked out!
