twilight, woods canyon lake, et al

Last weekend, two things happened:

1. We endured the teenfest at the Breaking Dawn release party at a bookstore in Tempe, and
2. We went camping with my parents and some family friends, the Rousch and Huffman families.
   

BREAKING DAWN
If you remember my Twilight Saga post from a week or so ago, you'll know what I'm talking about. If not, read it!

Anyway, Joe being the amazingly wonderful and thoughtful person he is, decided to go with me to Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe for the release party for this much-anticipated final novel in the series. I kind of had a hunch that we'd be the oldest people there, but I never really realized how MUCH older we would be. I mean, there were definitely some people older than us (chaperones, more than likely) and there were a small handful of folks older than us who were actually sporting homemade t-shirts and costumes. But all in all, we were some of the oldest people there.

We walked down to an ice cream shop for a little bit, then came back and found a corner to sit in away from the hoopla. When it came time to line up, Joe stayed with me for a few, but then decided to wait outside. Smart man! The whole store was like a can of sardines.

At midnight, after a very LOUD countdown by the customers, they began calling people by group to come pick up their copies. I had pre-ordered the book and with my receipt was a ticket that said group "G".

Group A was called and about 30 or so people filed by to pick up their books. Then group B was called and about 6 teen girls standing in front of me started to go get their books. I noticed one of them had been assigned to group Q. Now, I know they teach the alphabet to kids BEFORE they get into junior high, but I'm pretty sure that the letter Q is nowhere NEAR the letter B. So I decided, "heck, they're not even looking at group numbers anyway", got in line behind Q Girl, grabbed my copy of the book, and was out in 5 minutes.

Normally, I would have finished the book days ago, but I've been pacing myself. And while I only have about 100 pages left, I must say that Stephenie Meyer is really doing a great job at wrapping up the story. I'm very happy with my purchase!

CAMPING

Woods Canyon Lake was the place - we camped about a mile from the water. We drove up early on Saturday morning and got up there around 10am.

It was about a 2.5 hour drive (including one stop) to the north east of Phoenix. The drive out there was awesome. We had to drive through part of Mesa to get to Highway 87. The 87 is a stretch of road that (as far as I'm concerned) is one of the prettiest roads to drive on in Arizona. The highway drives through part of an Indian Reservation and, once you hit the reservation where the land is protected, it's just awesome. It still looks like a desert, but it's just pretty - rolling hills, huge rock formations, etc. It's something that doesn't look like it belongs amidst a huge sprawling metropolis.

Anyway, we got up to the campsite with little trouble. The only troubles were that (1) my car was very slow (especially on never-ending inclines) and (2) we almost didn't find the campsite.

Other than that, all was good. We went out to the lake for a short trip, took a hike to the rim, hung out around the campfire, relaxed, etc. I love camping SO MUCH!! The only part I didn't like was having to come back to the city.

(the picture upload on blogger isn't working right now, so we'll post some pics later on)

On the way back from our trip, something kicked up and cracked the radiator, apparently, causing all the antifreeze to leak out once we turned the car off. So I ended up having to take the care to the shop for a couple days to get a new radiator and parts. Yeah....this was definitely an expensive week. Fun...but expensive!