sunset
Candy and Darin were a referral from one of my favorite weddings earlier this year so I knew from the start that I would probably love this couple! I was right! They’re so sweet and their wedding with all the details fit them perfectly. Beer in a bathtub? Check. Vintage lettering? Check. Badass tattoos? Check! The day was really relaxed and easy going. Family and guests were so nice and welcoming. We felt like part of the wedding and not just the hired photographers, which is awesome! Enjoy this little sampling.
This was a simple but spectacular wedding in so many ways. Tracee and Chance were married at the Avi Resort and Casino in Laughlin, NV last month. Everyone was from out of town, including us (mostly Utah) and the wedding had a bit of a vacation feel to it. It was so relaxed, heartfelt and incredibly sweet. I met Tracee and Chance face to face for the first time on their wedding day and fell in love with them immediately! We actually ended up staying with the couple and wedding party out until late that night. You can’t really say you’re close to the bride and groom until you’ve had pancakes with them at 2am!
Their son Harper was the life of the party and danced the night away. Man does he have the moves! He was also slightly obsessed with the cake but, to be honest, I can’t really blame him because it was delicious.
Also, a wedding isn’t complete unless there are sugar gliders involved… just sayin’.
The desert is a beautiful, extreme and often volatile place. This weekend we spent the weekend in Southern California enjoying a much needed little getaway. We spent some time with family in the San Bernardino mountains and also had the chance to spend some time on the beach in Santa Monica. I’ll post some photos of our travels soon but first I wanted to share our trip home. We managed to skirt around the edge of what may be one of the largest storms we’ve had in my hometown in years. You can visit the news story at ParkerLiveOnline. We were hoping for a little adventure and boy did we get one. We ended up spending a couple hours on the I-10 due to part of the right hand lane being destroyed by a running wash. We debated spending the night in the first motel we could find because of the weather. When you grow up in the desert you appreciate fully the dangers of a running wash. We were lucky though and the washes were mere trickles by the time we arrived. The drive was absolutely stunning though. I’ve never seen clouds quite like these in my hometown, so low. We arrived home to a town without power and will probably be out for quite a few hours yet. Tomorrow is the first day of school and there’s the chance it might need delayed. Power lines down, bridge closed, Highway 62 shut down, nearly ever wash running and plenty of home damage from this storm. Go big or go home should be our storm seasons motto.
Quick iPhone camera snap of the damage to the I-10 as we passed by.
Most of these photos were taken on the last leg of our trip, back to Arizona, but there is a smattering of other randomness because I forgot to post a few fabulous photos somewhere along the way. I’m warning you… there are a lot of photos! Haha! It’s been amazing sorting through them. Normally, the editing process can be a bit tiring for me, but with every photo I opened, I relived the moment I captured. That’s the sign of a photo well taken.
We headed south from Taos and took the Turquoise Trail. We were told that we just HAD to stop in this little artist community called Madrid (pronounced MAD-rid). Absolutely adorable with a shocking amount of galleries and shops for such a small town.
We took the 40 home for a very short while and then turned off onto a smaller highway and for the life of me I can’t remember what it was. It was about an hour longer according to my maps program on my phone, though because of the stunning beauty we kept stumbling upon, it probably added an extra 4 hours. I think it was maybe 4 hours of driving and during that time we passed maybe 10 vehicles. That’s my kind of road.
The sandstone cliffs were remarkable. It was one of those random moments where we just turned down an unknown road. I almost turned back because I felt guilty about driving the Miata on a dirt road (you didn’t just read that John). I promise it was a VERY well kept dirt road and I drove VERY slow. We had many moments like that on this stretch. We just happened upon great turnout after great turnout. The best part of any trip is when you wander down a road you didn’t even know existed before that moment you saw the turn for it. I’m not one to really do too much in the way of self portraiture but when you’re in the presence of the self portrait queen it kinda rubs off. This was my first official test using the remote triggers and I’m fairly pleased with the results! I hope to work on this more in the future. I did need rescued at one point as I managed to get myself out onto one of the cliffs and couldn’t manage to get myself back. Jillian gladly helped and it’s beyond me how she just hops over the deep crevices without even flinching. It’s enough to make my stomach turn.
While driving we realized we were following the same storm west that we had photographed in Taos (remember that amazing lightning?!). This made for dramatic landscapes, colors and shadows and not to mention the odd burst of rain. It was breathtaking. As we crossed the border into Arizona the sunset was one of the most beautiful I’ve seen. It’s almost as if Arizona was welcoming me home.
This is the last of my New Mexico posts. It’s quite the doozy right? I hope you enjoyed following our adventures. I’m already trying to figure out what our next adventure will be.
“A journey is a person itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” – John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley in Search of America
Here’s to being taken again soon.
Random smatterings from our trip that either didn’t seem to fit anywhere else or someone I forgot! Haha! Forgive me… there were a LOT of photos to edit!
The entrance to the Carlsbad Caverns
