Don't Wager on this!: Spring in the desert

One of our favorite things to do in spring time is to go out to the desert and ride our dirt bikes! Well, this past week, we did just that. Our spring break was a week earlier than most people in California, so we had the desert pretty much all to ourselves. I love it when it's peaceful and not too dusty, thanks to some rain we had gotten a week ago. There were patches of flowers, grass and the creosote bushes have these cute little flowers on them. We were out there from Saturday afternoon until Thursday afternoon. Sunday we went to Tehachapi to be with my family for General Conference. I was out running on Monday and I found a knife and a baby tortoise! He was so cute. I didn't touch him, of course, but he was probably about five years old. All our kids now ride on their own bikes and we were even able to ride out to the tortoise preserve, which is about six miles from our camp. Scotty is so cute on his little bike and he loved to follow around Wyatt all over the place. We also had fun with Jeremy teaching us some skills he learned from his Shane Watts class. He was getting us to hit our back brake and learn to slide our rear wheel out around a corner so we can learn more control over the bike. I was getting mine really pretty sideways! But coming out of the turn was more difficult for me. I have to learn to be a bit more coordinated!
We also did a bit of exploring outside our little Cal City up into Red Rock Canyon where there is this tunnel called the Burro Schmidt tunnel. It's off the main highway up a dirt road for about eight miles. That eight mile long road was pretty long and bumpy and took us about 40 minutes to get up. The tunnel was hand dug by this man who moved out here from Rhode Island in the 1800's trying to mine for something and wanted to dig a tunnel so he could get his goods to the other side of the mountain faster. Well, faster was realtive. It took him 38 years to finish the tunnel and I don't think he ever used it to move his stuff! Pretty crazy!
It was nice to be with Jeremy's family and with mine and have fun with our kids. We had fun being all together, too. It's so nice to be with our family and grow together doing fun things. I'm grateful for our trailer that shelters us when it's windy, although this time it was gorgeous.