Mentally Hopeless: So we took a road trip...

So last Friday, my friend Laura and I took our girls on a road trip to Payson, AZ. It is about 85 miles on Hwy AZ-87 North from my hometown in the valley, Chandler, AZ. The only turns are as the highway bends and turns it's way around the the mountains; chewing gum is a must for decompression of popping ears. So we are a good 75 miles in and suddenly we hear this loud rumbling sound and of course, my friend Laura says, "what's that noise?" I assume it's the motorcycle that has just come up behind us and passed us, but apparently I was wrong. We had a flat. Not just a simple flat either, an all out "looks like we had been driving on it for hours," flat.

So now we have 5 young ladies on the narrow shoulder of a main highway, at least 10 miles from the nearest town. Chivalry is obviously dead because no one stops. So after some minutes of digging through the trunk for a donut tire, a jack and a tire iron we get to the task of changing the tire. Now this is not my first tire change, but for some reason, I always jack up the car first, then realize I should have loosened the lug nuts BEFORE jacking up the car...oops. So after, lowering the car, scissor jacks suck, loosening the lugs, jacking up the car and completing the whole tire changing process, we load up and get back in the car.

On the road again...
We head into the small town of Payson. Knowing that we can't drive home (85 miles down the mountain) on a donut tire, we look for some tire shops. We find a listing on our GPS for Ed's Tire Shop and head over there, but it's not Ed's anymore, it's Kyle's. Oh how, young and dreamy Kyle was. With his sweet country boy mannerisms and accent, I just wanted to snatch him up and kiss him. Sadly, he didn't have the tire size we needed. We decided to hold off on the tires for a little while so that we can enjoy a bit of the sweet mountain town. First, we went over and picked up lunch and headed down Main Street to the park. We had a lovely picnic in the grass and watched this cute little squirrel dig a hole and leave behind an unburied seed.

After the picnic, we took a stroll around the lake where we saw ducks and dragonflies. Then we walked around outside of the museum.

On the way back to the car we saw another squirrel and a hawk. This one seemed to be posing for my camera, seeing as how he stayed in the same position until I completed my series of shots and didn't move until I put the camera down. The hawk seemed to be circling us, but as my aunt pointed out later, we did seem to be surrounded by squirrels.