Catching up on the last couple of days

On Friday we had planned a visit with friends Beth and Peanut and their sweet little girl, Ruth.

First - a couple of "catch-up" pictures:

On Thursday, we drove to Lancaster to do some shopping. Along the way, we stopped at Lamont Odett Vista Point overlooking the California Aqueduct and Lake Palmdale.

When we were together with Carl's family between Christmas and New Years, his daughter, Pamela, gave him a coupon that her employer had given her for a free turkey. We had already cooked two turkeys for Christmas and decided that we'd try to use it later in the spring. We weren't sure we would be able to find a turkey outside of the time from before Thanksgiving to New Years, and we'd looked a few places with no success. But we stopped at a Winco store in Lancaster and found that they had a few frozen turkeys:

So... we have a turkey in the refrigerator defrosting, with the plan to roast it early next week.

We had made plans to meet up on Friday with friends Beth and Peanut at Vasquez Rocks - just a short drive from our campground. We started in the Interpretive Center.

We started our hike down toward the picturesque rocks -- and Carl remembered to get a picture of us early on in our visit instead of our unfortunate normal behavior to forget it altogether!

Walking on the trail toward the rocks...

A family picture - Ruth, Beth, and Peanut

The rocks here are evidently right along the San Andreas and San Gabriel fault line - which is what has caused the rocks to get pushed up so dramatically.

Some petroglyphs along the trail...

The rocks were really neat looking...

... a number of people were climbing on them -- you can see some against the sky in the far right "U" in the rock which will give you perspective of how large the rocks were.

We stayed on the trail in the valley

The rocks are really otherworldly looking...

... there have been a number of space travel movies filmed here.

We debated how long that stack is going to stay there... Beth said that it was a practical problem in a class she took at one time, and the answer was that a strong earthquake will probably dislodge them.

It was a beautiful day to be outside!

Miss Ruth enjoyed playing in the dirt!

We had a good time with Beth and family -- and now know of a good place to hike not far from this campground!