Life As A Reissig: Prescott Day Trip Photo Spam

I'm not feeling super talkative today but want to share a day trip we took. Since my last post was so wordy, I'll try to keep it limited here, so this will be mostly pictures. :)

A couple weekends ago Clinton and I decided to get out of the triple digit heat and head for somewhere a little more inviting. Clinton's sister Andrea lives in Prescott with her husband and daughter so we decided to go hike around up there, and then meet them later in the day for a picnic. We woke up that Sunday morning and hopped in the car with Emmy and our water packs, and we were on our way.

Adventure puppy, ready to go!

Once we were in Prescott, our intention was to go hike Thumb Butte. On the way there, I started having some weird chest pains. I was paying attention and listening to my body and it started to ebb, so I thought I'd probably be alright. We parked, put our packs on, and got ready to hike.

I just love the forest!

There were several of these little guys on the buildings at the park site.

Thumb Butte from the base, through the trees.

Unfortunately, something super weird happened when we were there. I started having more chest pains, and I could NOT breathe. The hike was fairly steep the whole way, but it was paved so it wasn't like scrambling or anything that I haven't dealt with before ... but my legs were seizing up and I kept having to stop every couple of minutes to catch my breath, and I started freaking out a little bit. I felt like I was going to have a panic attack and I got really irritated and said we should just forget the whole thing and go home - I was acting irrational. I realized that whatever was happening wasn't going to stop, so we turned around and went back to the car. It took me a good 10 minutes to calm down, and Clinton suggested that maybe I was suffering from altitude sickness. I don't know why I didn't think of that, but once he said it, it made sense. There is quite a difference from Phoenix to Prescott, but I've never had that happen to me any other time I've been there so who knows... just a weird, one-off thing.

While I was trying to calm down Clinton drove around downtown Prescott a little bit so we could just look at some of the cool old buildings and houses. (apologies in advance if some of them are blurry or wonky - I took them all from the passenger's seat of our moving car.)

Eventually, after I had calmed down and felt better, we made our way over to the Recreation Area at the South shore of Lynx Lake. There is a lower, mostly flat trail all around the lake that we decided to walk around. The lake looked so nice - it was a cloudy day and the clouds were reflecting in the water. As we walked around, the clouds got more and more ominous and just as we finished up, it started to rain.

We went to the grocery store and Clinton ran in to get some stuff for sandwiches, chips, and drinks, and then we headed to the courthouse downtown where Aurora (Clinton's niece) and Andrea (his sister) came to meet us. We ate, laid in the grass looking at cloud shapes, watched Rory fly her teeny little parrot kite, giggled, took pictures at the couthouse, and just relaxed, taking in the perfect weather.