While Liam spent spring break in Duck with his friends (funny enough, they rented the same house we rented for Thanksgiving 2024), the rest of us decided to head to the desert. Funny backstory: Initially, Henry was a hard no on going with us. It's hard to blame him for not wanting that much undiluted parent time. But then one day I was telling Max about the trip, and he immediately wanted to come, so we switched our dates around to coincide with his spring break, then went back to Henry and asked if he wanted to miss a few days of school to come with us after all ... and wouldn't you know it, that resulted in a yes.
After a very early morning flight, we arrived in Las Vegas before noon, picked up our rental car, and hit the road, with a stop at Walmart to buy a cooler and food. We were on the lookout for wildflowers, and although the heat had burned off the height of the bloom, we were still treated to an amazing superbloom. At the lower elevations, we saw yellow, white, and purple flowers, and then higher up we were treated to lovely bright oranges. Each day we went to different locations and scouted for flowers along the way. The most amazing display, in my opinion, came on the day that we drove to Ubehebe Crater. On the way there, we saw a hillside entirely covered in bright yellow flowers, and amazingly, there was nobody else even around. Nobody else felt like getting out of the car, so I stood there just taking it in by myself for a while. Truly incredible experience.
But of course, we weren't just there for the flowers. (Lie: We were totally there for the flowers.) We also did other things we loved! Mike and the boys did a long, hot, challenging hike while I rented a bike and went for a very hot, very windy ride. We got up and saw the sunrise every day. Mike and I went out at night to see the stars (So. Many. Stars!). We even drove to the furthest reaches of the park because I saw a place on the map noted as a Joshua tree forest.
Max and Henry's favorite thing by far (like by a million miles) was going for their first horseback ride. They went at sunset and had an absolute blast, and then spent the rest of the trip arguing whether Moonshine or Mojave was the superior horse. (Brothers gonna brother, am I right?)
Naturally, it wouldn't be a Fort vacation without some kind of infestation. This time around, it was INCHWORMS. Turns out that the conditions that make it so favorable for a superbloom ALSO are favorable to inchworms. Friends, they were dropping from the trees onto our clothes and skin. They were crawling up the drainpipes into the bathtub. They slithered in massive numbers under every door crack and through every crevice. Everyone in the whole hallway had towels shoved under their doors to block them, and every morning when we ventured out of our room, the hall floor was a real horror show. But hey, at least they didn't bite us!
