Christmas part 2 - Southern Arizona Adventure

So after our joyous Christmas holiday we headed out to tackle the ENTIRE southern part of Arizona.  Matt's little sister Kate lives in Sierra Vista and we were determined to get there and visit any National Park within an hour of her.  We did pretty darn good.

We started the trip off with a visit to Kartchner Caverns.  Yes we took all children in...and no we did not get fined $10,000 for touching any of the caves artifacts.

Laina was a great tour guide through the visitors center.

And McLaren got all of his "touching, jumping, and climbing" done outside...before we went in.

The story of how the cave was discovered is incredible.  2 buddies saw a "sinkhole" and marked it to come back and visit at a later date.  For 7 years they would visit and crawl through cement-like mud and explore the caves, eventually informing the owner of the land who they then worked with on correctly opening it to be viewed by the public.

Next on the list was the town of Busbee (say "Busbee's from Bisbee five times.)

Such a lovely family photo...

Paul and Kate brought their little ones who did a darn good job with all that darkness.

We rode through the miners tunnel and hopped off at a few places while our tour guide (who reminded me of luigi from Super Mario Brothers...) told us about life in the mine (he had worked there most of his life).

My favorite part was at the end when he asked for volunteers to hop up on the metal cart...Indy hopped up there and he told them that was the miners restroom.

The next day we bid goodbye to Paul & Kate and made our way through Tucson, stopping outside at the Titan Missile Museum. 

We walked down the several flights of stairs to the underground safe compartment where for 20 years crews worked round the clock to always be ready for a possible launch...one never came.

I'm thinking Laina was hoping for a possible launch back to ground level and away from another tour.

After all those tours we made our final stop at Picacho State Park.  We arrived a little late so we didn't get a huge hike in...but the kids had fun.

Our attempt at a self-timed family picture...awesome.  And I wonder where Indy gets his weird faces from...

I love this rascal.

The kids really wanted a picture of them "holding" up the cactus...I didn't have the heart to tell them it wasn't working.

We then headed to Phoenix to attend Matt's older brothers' wedding!