Our last night there, my mom had signed us up for the Full Moon Hike sponsored by the naturalist society they've been volunteering with since moving out there. It was really neat! We got to watch the full moon rise over the mountains and hunt for scorpions with black lights. The group ended up spotting three, and my dad and I found two of them--go McKenzie/Conlins! One of the most interesting things I learned on the hike was about how the vegetation in this area changes with every 500 feet of elevation, thus, one of the ways this group tracks climate change is by observing the vegetation and how the places where it grows changes over the years: plants that were once able to survive lower down where the hotter temperatures exist have slowly been disappearing and are only found higher up now because it gets too hot in the lower elevations.
We loved our time with Nana and Papa, some bonus time with my sis, Kai and Isla and, really, let's be honest, just all of it. But all good things must come to an end. We were determined to get home to Adam to celebrate Easter as a family, and to give the boys a day before heading back to school, so we hauled it home in one LOOOOONG day's drive. Zac helped with the driving when I felt myself turning into a zombie. I was so worried about him driving in the late hours, but he was alert and did a great job. I had forgotten that for teens, the hours after 10pm aren't necessarily sleepy ones like they are for me these days. It reminded me of how easily I used to be able to stay up past midnight! We pulled into our garage at 2:58am on Easter Sunday--and all went right to sleep, sleeping the sleep of the happily satisfied.
