July 27-31, 2005 Tucson

I woke up at about 10:00am, which is pretty late considering I knew there was a seven hour drive ahead of me.
The clouds were like flames licking the air.
They were without form, just streaks of white across the blue sky.
By about 1:30pm, I'd reached Elephant Butte. At the time, I thought that was the most incredible name for a city I'd ever seen in my entire life.
Until two minutes later, when I arrived in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.
I had to stop in Truth or Consequences to wander around and revel in its greatness.
Don't quote me on it, but I think that's the Elephant Butte River?
After lunch at Pizza Hut (cringe), I hit the road and promised myself no more extended rest stops today.
Perfect
Just before 5:00pm, I crossed over into Arizona.
It was about an hour later when the skies again turned black The scent of burnt earth wafted through the air. Dust storms formed outside my windows, and up ahead I guessed there would be forest fires.
Darker still.
Smoke rolled off the sides of mountains where trees had been struck by lightning.
Coming through the other side of the storm.
First glimpse of Tucson. That night, Matt and I met up with some of his friends at Rocco's for cheap hot-wings and Old Style. Then we went out to a dive bar and drank pitchers of Coors and played shuffleboard against fratboys. We went to Che's and drank more. We went to Plush and drank even more. After a latenight trip to Wendy's, Gretchen, Matt and I went back to his house and called it a night.
This is in the parking lot of a Firestone waiting for my car to be serviced. It took some ridiculous amount of time, like five hours.
Matt was at class, but he called me and told me to drive down Speedway Boulevard west for as long as I wanted. He said I'd get some amazing photographs.
Outside Tucson's city limits.
You don't want to know. Really.
Driving to my cousins' house in the foothills.
The sort-of live at the base of Mount Lemmon.
I don't remember where this is. I want to say it was taken during our hike up Mount Lemmon, but the date on the picture is wrong...
This is definitely from our drive/hike. We decided that before I left for San Diego, we would go to Summerhaven. My little cousin Emily is very fond of ladybugs, so she led us here.
Lots of ladybugs.
That's Emily
Mt. Lemmon