Chip Drop: Free Mulch for Your Garden (And All Your Neighbors)

A few years ago I heard about Chip Drop, a service that connects homeowners with arborists. You offer to take a truckload of wood chips, the arborists get to unload their goods without driving them to the dump, and the environment is happy for both of you. I initially thought that it sounded kind of iffy - what kind of garbage were they going to dump on my driveway. But I did my first Chip Drop and I was hooked. 

Back then I only had 10 fruit trees and four garden beds in my yard. I figured I would see what I could do with that mulch, between topping the garden beds and mulching the fruit trees. I was surprised at how quickly I was able to spread out a load of wood chips. 

Dwarf Black Mulberry Trees

This is mostly for my Arizona friends, but it may pertain to others depending on where you live; please consult your local nursery... 

I have a new favorite tree: the dwarf black mulberry. I planted a dwarf black mulberry about two years ago as a two-foot-tall stick in the ground. Within a year it was about ten feet tall. By year two it was so tall that I needed to massively prune it to keep it at a manageable height since it was well over 15 feet tall. So quick growing? Check. 

But it also produces massive quantities of delicious fruits. After one year of growing, we were excited to have the tree covered in berries. They are much more flavorful than the wild mulberries I remember eating in Illinois as a kid (those were essentially tasteless berries that we ate just because they were there). These berries are large, plump, and flavorful. One of my kids described the flavor as a mild blackberry/raspberry mix. 

So why is this a recommended tree? First, fast growing trees in Arizona are pretty important, as they provide a lot of shade in a short amount of time.

Backyard Chickens - One Year Later

Just over one year ago we got backyard chickens. This came after almost ten years of working with the town council (i.e. badgering them) to change our town's ban on chickens. The week after the chicken bill passed, we had our chicks in a brooder in the garage. 

If you want to read about the beginning of our chicken era, you can check it out here. 

But here are eleven unexpected things that were learned through our journey. 

1. Easter egg hunts are real life - We had a two week period when egg production went down. I was trying to figure out why they had stopped laying, and my friend, who has raised chickens for a long time, said that they must be laying eggs somewhere else in the yard. I looked around and didn't find anything. Several days later I was checking the landscaping. I saw a chicken in the bushes, and sure enough, I found the nest with half a dozen eggs in it. This happened again yesterday, with 7 eggs from at least two chickens being found under a different bush. If you think your chickens have stopped laying, they very well could be laying somewhere else. 

2. If  you don't want the daily Easter egg hunt, consider some portable nesting boxes. I built  three of them, and placed them around the yard where the chickens tended to congregate. One gets used daily. The other two occasionally. 

3. One square foot of artificial turf works great for nesting boxes. You can find these as samples in many landscaping stores, often for a dollar or two or for free. These can be washed and brushed out, and the chickens tend to enjoy laying on them. A lot less work than regularly replacing straw. 

4. Do you remember the McDLT from the '80s? It keeps the hot side hot and the cold side cold? Raising chickens is like a year long McDLT. In the summer, we have to keep them cool (check out the article linked above for that journey). In the winter, we have to keep them warm, but we don't have to do much. Unless temperatures are well below freezing (which they are not in Phoenix), they do not need a heater. They just need an enclosed coop where they can stay warm at night. Not convinced that that is enough? Consider adding some red pepper flakes to their feed or scratch in the winter. My chickens love scratch with red pepper flakes, and they seem quite content, even in the 35 degree mornings. 

5. Chickens love interacting with people, especially if you start when they're chicks. To keep them
comfortable with people, my family and I will regularly let them eat seed or scratch out of our hands. The more you feed, pet, and hold them, the less skittish they will be around people. In fact, when I come home from work, go into the backyard, and say, "Here chick chicks", the entire flock will come running to greet me. It is fantastic! 

6. Hens need around 14 hours of light to stay productive with their laying. In the winter months, as we have fewer daylight hours, I have added a string of Christmas lights on a timer to the inside of the coop. I went from one egg every other day to three eggs per day. 

7. Chickens love treats. We have their regular feed, and I recently got some scratch to try out. It's like candy! In fact, heaven forbid I come into the backyard with a plastic container similar to the one I keep the scratch in. They will follow me around expectantly looking for the scratch. And if I don't give them a treat, they will squawk like a two year old wanting another piece of candy. Or more scratch. Or worms. 

8. Chickens typically return to their coop at night on their own, but this needs to be verified. Once, we were out a little late, and unbeknownst to me, the door to the coop had been knocked closed by one of the chickens. When I went to close up the coop after dark, the chickens were asleep in various places around the outside of the coop. I had to scoop the sleepy birds up one by one and shove them into the coop. Another time, I did a head count and one was missing. I did a cursory search around the yard and couldn't find her. Fearing having to tell my kids that one of the chickens had been eaten by another animal, I frantically searched around the yard for her. After about 20 minutes, I found her in the corner of a planter tucked under a tree. And under her I found three eggs (see #1-2 above). Nightly headcounts IN the coop are imperative. 

9. Fresh, unwashed eggs do not need to be refrigerated. Eggs have a coating called the bloom on the outside of the shell. This coating protects the egg from bacteria entering into the porous shell. Eggs will stay fresh at room temperature for about two weeks. I did get tired of our cardboard egg cartons on the counter, so I made a wooden egg holder out of some walnut scraps just to add a little class to our egg production. 

10. If you have found eggs in the yard and don't know how old they are, or if you have messed up the rotation on your counter, you can use the float test to determine the freshness of the eggs. Submerge the egg in cool water. If it sinks on its side, it is fresh (but the bloom has been washed off and you will need to refrigerate it). If it sinks but stands on its end, there is some air in the egg. It is older but still good to eat. If it floats to the top of the water, it is no longer fresh and should not be eaten. 

11. Sometimes chickens look like death. They molt about once per year. They look like phoenixes that are about to burn up. They act weird, stop laying, and look absolutely terrible. This is normal (I guess), and once their feathers grow back in they get back to their previous selves. 

There you have it. I'm sure in the coming years I will have many more things that I will learn, so stay tuned for more chicken updates. Is there anything that I missed? Add a comment below and let me know about your chicken journey. 

Happy chicken farming! 

Backyard Chickens in Arizona

I've had several readers reach out to me asking about a chicken update. Initially I was waiting for our chickens to all be laying, but then I got wrapped up in making sure my chickens are not dying with the heat we're experiencing in Phoenix. I had no idea how much work it is to keep chickens alive in the midst of a 30-days-above-110-degrees-in-a-row streak. But it's a lot of work. 

We got our first egg in May. We were having dinner on our patio with some friends, and a chicken started squawking like it was being murdered. We eventually found a soft shelled egg, and we were excited. Then I got impatient that one of our chickens was laying, but the others were not. Over the next four weeks or so, our Ameraucanas all got into line. It was fun finding these blue eggs around. 

Side note. I built a chicken coop with nesting boxes. Guess what. None of our Ameraucanas wanted to lay in the nesting boxes. I know there are ways to force them to lay there (mainly locking them in the coop for a couple of days until they're in the habit of laying in there), but 1) it was too hot to keep them in the coop, 2) I didn't want them not to have access to all of the grass and bugs they were in the habit of eating, and 3) my family and I kind of enjoy looking around the yard for the chicken eggs. It's like an Easter egg hunt, but every day. Plus, the chickens all tend to lay in the same place every day, so we have our four spots to check out daily as we look for eggs. 

The Australorps were a different story. We got our first brown egg from one of them almost a month after we got our first blue egg. I was pretty impatient, but a friend of mine reminded me that people all develop at different speeds, and chickens are the same. But by the time we had a brown eggs, all three Ameraucanas were laying. We started getting three to four eggs per day, which meant that we were now ready to start substituting store bought eggs with our backyard eggs. 

And then the heat came in like a fiery demon dragon. We are currently in a record breaking heatwave, and keeping chickens alive is no joke. I've got the entire coop open up, with fans blowing air throughout the night (which makes it like a convection oven rather than a regular oven). I set up a misting system around our trees which we turn on each afternoon. This gives the chickens some coolness and really seems to help. We have umbrellas set up around the areas in which they lay, since the bird brains can't seem to stay out of the sun when they're laying eggs. And we give them frozen treats when we can. They love frozen watermelon set in water. So far, all of these things seem to be working, and we haven't lost a chicken. Fingers crossed that things will cool off and our chickens will survive. 

So where are we now with things? Chickens are supposed to slow down their laying in the summer, but we're getting 3-5 eggs per day. We are moving umbrellas around the yard 23 times per day to keep our chickens in the shade while they're laying. We have exactly 14 water containers around the yard so they will stay hydrated. And two of my three kids love the chickens and cuddle them as often as they can (the other one is terrified of their dinosaur feet and their beady eyes). I had no idea how pet-like they would be. 

And they all have names. They are: 

- Goldilocks (the first one to lay an egg)
- Chikera
- Kylee Henner
- Hei Hei (this one may or may not have had brain damage as a chick - very quirky)
- Not Hei Hie
- Ha Ha

Are chickens a lot of work? Kind of. I guess it really depends on the weather and how close to dying they are. Is it worth it? Absolutely. Aside from the wonderful eggs that we get from them, their poop is like garden gold. When my son cleans out the chicken coop and dumps the chicken poop into the compost, we all get excited for the high levels of nitrogen it's adding (okay, maybe I'm the only one in our house that gets excited about chicken poop). 

So if you're contemplating backyard chickens, you would get a hearty Renaissance Dad thumbs up! 

Happy chickening! 

Easy Homemade Pickles

As an avid gardener, I don't always make the best decisions when I am planting my biannual garden (in Arizona we have two planting seasons, spring and fall - double the fun!). Sometimes I see something at the nursery that I think I would like to try out, but it comes in a six pack of transplants. And instead of using what I want and composting the rest, I tend to find a place to plant everything. 

So this summer we ended up with six Armenian cucumber plants. If you don't know what an Armenian cucumber is, think of a normal cucumber and then multiply it by 11. Some of our cucumbers have been more than two feet long, and all of our cucumber plants have been abundant. At the prime picking a few weeks ago we were pulling off four or five cucumbers per day. That's a lot of cucumber! 

When I took one to my neighbor, he sent me a great recipe for homemade pickles. I have since modified it and added a key upgrade. This is great for Armenian cucumbers. Here's how to make it. 

Upcycled Stained Glass Bicycle Wheel

 In 2014 I got together with some friends and learned to do some basic stained glass. Two years after that I started a big stained glass project that culminated in 2017 with the installation of an 8-panel stained glass piece (https://www.renaissance-dad.com/2017/06/diy-stained-glass.html). Since then I have dabbled in stained glass, doing little projects as an artistic stress relief. 

Fast forward to the COVID years, and stress levels were high. So amidst the other things that help me find balance (woodworking, gardening, DIY projects, home improvement). This past spring I decided to start another stained glass project, and figured my garden could use a little color. My inspiration was something my mom sent me years ago as a possible project, and it has been living in my brain for all these years. 

I started by obtaining an old bicycle. I took the front wheel and the fork off. After stripping the wheel of reflectors, the tube and the tire, and after cleaning up the wheel, I had the base for my project. The plan was to put glass pieces in the triangular sections of

Planting a Garden for Polinators

All of my garden beds are mostly fruits and vegetables. I went nuts this spring and planted 19 tomato plants; we are on the brink of eating gazpacho for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We have cucumbers, melons, peppers, and herbs. 

But last fall my 11 year old helped me pick out some flowers to intersperse around the veggies, and she really appreciated the look (she's into the aesthetics of things). I did as well. It added color, attracted bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, and just made gardening that much more enjoyable. 

Expanding the Orchard

Remember in Back to the Future when Doc was talking about Old Man Peabody having a crazy dream of breeding pine trees? While the breeding trees part is a little weird, it's kind of like my dream, except instead of pine trees, I have a dream of having fruit trees as far as the eye can see. 

I have written before about cutting down oleanders annually to add fruit trees. I started with 11 oleanders in my backyard, and to date have removed seven of them - only four more to go. Each on has been replaced with some sort of fruit producing tree or bush. This past month was no exception. 

In the fall, I placed an order for some fruit trees through The Urban Farm. This is a wonderful resource for anybody looking to expand their backyard garden, but it is especially beneficial for those who live in the Phoenix-area, as they have an annual fruit tree event where you can buy trees and bushes grown specifically for the Phoenix climate. The one drawback is that the trees are quite affordable, so I ended up buying more than I was ready to plant. This meant that I had to spend extra time preparing the spaces, expanding the irrigation system, and getting the soil ready for my trees. But I also learned a lot from The Urban Farm about feeding my trees, taking care of them, and helping them thrive in the climate I'm in. 

Cutting Your Christmas Tree in the Arizona Mountains

It's not going in our yard...

**As you read this post, there is a hidden game. How many quotes from Christmas Vacation can you
find? 

I love Christmas! There isn't an area of our house that isn't covered in lights, decorations, candles, or peppermint. There is no such thing as too much when it comes to Christmas. But this year, we decided to try something different. We still did the lights and the trains and the decorations. But in 2021 we teamed up with our neighbors and kicked off our fun, old-fashioned family Christmas by heading out into the mountains in the old front-wheel drive sleigh to embrace the frosty majesty of the winter landscape and select that most important of Christmas symbols. 

So this year we decided to drive to the Arizona mountains and cut down our own Christmas tree. Here's what I discovered:

- Arizona has five National Forests (Apache-Sitegraves, Coconino, Kaibab, Prescott, and Tonto) that sell permits for Christmas Trees. 

- Permits cost $15-$20 each, depending on the National Forest, and allow you to cut a tree up to 10 feet tall (Apache-Sitegraves allows trees up to 15 feet tall)

The kids approve. 

- Each National Forest has a number of cutting areas and species available to cut. 

- Cutting dates vary by National Forest, but some allow you to cut your tree as early as October (that's ambitious, even for me). 

So armed with two permits, two dads and their kids (five total) loaded up in two trucks to go to the mountains to get our family Christmas trees (it helped that we already have a stupid tie with little Santa Clauses all over it). And since our wives were not with us, there was nothing to stop us from overestimating the height of our living room ceilings. 

We drove for about two hours and turned off onto the gravel road that ran through the middle of the cutting zone that we chose. While we ended up on a small dirt road that definitely needed four-wheel-drive to navigate, the main road would have definitely worked for a car or smaller SUV, and even a wood panel station wagon would have been able to handle it (just don't forget the saw). 

Fully decorated

After about an hour of walking through the forest, we found our tree. Was it the perfect Christmas tree? Yes and no. It was not a perfect triangular shaped tree, with perfect, full branches. But it was the tree that my kids and I liked, and the one that drew our eye. And much like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree, this one needed a home for the holidays. 

Note: as you are wandering through the forest looking for your tree, be sure to mark where your potential choices are so you can make your way back to them. Our kids marked the path with sticks and rocks so we could find them after looking at several options. 

Yes, we did remember the saws, and no, we did not have to dig the trees up (although part of me really wanted to dig the tree out of the ground and drive home with a giant rootball hanging off the back of the truck, just for comedic effect). And while my 11-year-old took some time to warm up to the tree (she initially didn't think the tree looked good enough, although, in all honesty, it looked quite wonky before it had lights and ornaments), we had fun memories of cutting down our first Christmas tree. 

The little dog approves. 

If you are interested in cutting down a tree, I encourage you to look into the rules and regulations of your area and follow them. And even though you may think they're dirty and messy and corny and cliched, please do not cut down your neighbor's tree, no matter how desperate you are. 

From Chandler, Arizona, to wherever you are in the world, Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays! 

Merry Christmas! For more decorating tips, click here. 

Keeping Fruit Trees Alive in the Vicious Desert

Happy, thriving trees! 

When my wife and I moved to Arizona from Chicago, we had quite a gardening wake up call. In Illinois, the dirt is so fertile that I could sneeze outside and a month later I would have a harvest of whatever I had eaten for breakfast the day of the sneeze. Arizona, with its incredible heat, terrible soil, and overall mocking attitude towards gardeners was quite a different story. 

Originally I had given up on the idea of gardening. But after seeing a garden that some junior high students at my school grew in their science class, I though, "If goofy teenagers can grow a garden, surely I can figure this out." 

The Joy of Gardening with Your Kids

Anybody who has followed Renaissance Dad for any amount of time knows that I love gardening. I have regular articles about best practices that I've followed, mishaps in my garden, things that I love to grow, and lots and lots of mentions of manure (it's like gold for the garden!). And for the past 13 years, as long as I've had kids, I have enjoyed my kids joining me in the garden. Sometimes it feels like a chore, and sometimes it is a chore, but I love spending time in the garden with my entire family. But I'm not always sure that they share my enthusiasm. 

This past year, things seemed to have turned a corner. My oldest joins me every week with yard work, where she routinely mows the lawn. Not many teenagers will mow, much less want to mow, and yet she is out there with me in the 100 degree weather, working away. 

My ten-year-old middle daughter was very excited to help build a raised garden bed for melons this past winter. She helped measure, cut, carry, place,

Tool Review: Greenworks 60V Self Propelled Wheelbarrow

Anybody who knows me knows that I love gardening and working in my yard. I am notorious for working myself to complete exhaustion, at which point my wife will ask me if I can moderate. The short answer is no. I cannot. I am like a toddler. I either go 120% or 0%. I have an on/off switch, and that's it. 

Case in point. Two weekends ago I wanted to plant a fruit tree. The problem was that I had two oleander bushes in my way. Over the past four years I have averaged one oleander bush removal per year, while needing an entire year to forget how terrible that process is. But this fruit tree had to be planted, two oleander bushes

Turning Dead Palm Trees into Christmas Decorations

The summer of 2020 in Phoenix was absolutely brutal. We broke almost all heat records, with new records in days over 100 degrees (144 days), days over 110 degrees (53), and days over 115 degrees (14). We also broke a record for the highest low-temperatures, with 28 nights not dropping below 90 degrees. Needless to say, this summer was intense.

So it's not surprising that all around the Valley of the (Intense) Sun, people had their palm trees crisping up and dying. When two of my queen palms started looking like something out of an Indiana Jones desert scene, I thought they were not getting enough water. Then I noticed that palm trees throughout my neighborhood looked the same, so I knew these were deader than a Monty Python Norwegian Blue. 

I hesitated to cut them down, since each Christmas I wrapped them in red and white lights and made them look like candy cane sticks. But I also didn't want to have dead palm trees throughout the holidays. 

What's a boy to do... 

Greenworks 60V Gen2 String Trimmer: Clean Up That Messy Line

Here's a story that most of us are familiar with. You have spent a few hours doing yard work. All that's left is trimming the edges of the yard and then blowing off the hardscape, and you're ready for a shower and a cold beverage. You start your string trimmer, get a small percentage of the way done, and then your string line runs out. You're faced with the dilemma of spending the time fighting with the trimmer to refill the line. I know I'm not the only one who has filled up a dual spool trimmer line, gotten it tightly wound, and then went to put it on the trimer head, only to have the line jump bounce out, unwind itself, and get tangled.  At that point, I'm thinking that the edge of the yard doesn't look that bad and can be taken care of the next time I mow. My neighbor doesn't say anything, but I see him eyeing those sloppy edges.

That happens to me every. Single. Time. It never fails. When the trimmer string needs replacing, it's at the tail end of my yard work but never as I swipe that last blade of grass.

Gen 1 (top) and Gen 2 (bottom)

Enter the Greenworks 60V Gen 2 String Trimmer. Any loyal Renaissance Dad reader

My Secret for Finishing Compost

Like any other grownup, I have many chores that I do on a regular basis. Dishes, laundry, yard work, bills, etc. The cyclical list goes on and on. As a parent, I often do these things automatically without thinking about having my kids help.


This past weekend, when I had to rotate my compost and chip it up, it was not automatic that I asked my kids to help out. In fact, it was only on a whim that I asked when my wife was heading out with my middle daughter. And I was somewhat surprised that both my oldest daughter and my son enthusiastically agreed to help out.

Renaissance Dad Tool Review: Greenworks 18" 60V Brushless Chainsaw

Before I was 25, the only chainsaw experience I had was playing Doom. My first chainsaw was an electric chainsaw for some light yard work around the house, mainly trimming thick branches that I didn't want to use a pruning saw for. The first time I used a gas powered chainsaw when helping a friend, I realized that my electric chainsaw could only be called a chainsaw because it had a chain. But so does my bike...

Then I started doing a little more major tree trimming, and my electric chainsaw could no longer hack it (hehehe). It finally saw its end when I helped my parents with a fallen mesquite tree, the last thing that it ever cut down. The electric saw was gone. I loved the power of a gas saw, but never wanted the mess, smell, or hassle of it around the house. What's a guy to do?

Spring Gardening: Build the Foundation by Preparing the Soil

When I lived in Illinois, gardening was so easy. My wife and I lived in an old farmhouse. In the back corner of the yard were the remnants of an ancient tree, long since cut down. The roots were decaying, and the soil was so rich and fertile. We popped in a tomato plant and a jalapeno plant, and that summer we had no shortage of vegetables. We did nothing, and our crop was abundant. We congratulated ourselves on being gardening prodigies.

And then we moved to Arizona. Alkaline soil composed of clay, sand, and the tears of those who once dreamed of gardening. Irrigation that must be applied in the proper amounts at just the right time or we would be the reason the state would move toward complete drought. Tomatoes that would split their skins if the sun hit the fruit for five seconds too long, and would drop from the plant if I didn't sing to them each night. We were not in Kansas (or anywhere in the Midwest) anymore.

Tonto Natural Bridge: A Great Hike for Kids

It is no secret that I absolutely love the state I live in. The fact is that Arizona has the best climate, the greatest outdoor treasures, and the coolest places to explore. If this were an academic paper, I wouldn't need to cite sources, because this is common knowledge (at least for those of us who live here). And for all of the years I have lived here, I find that there are still new places to explore, especially with kids.

So a few weekends ago we loaded up into the family truckster and headed to the mountains. The destination was Tonto Natural Bridge. This is an Arizona state park that is just north of Payson (just under two hours from the Phoenix area). While it is a kid friendly state park, it is not pet friendly, so Kona had to stay home.

When I read about the hiking trails, they all seemed pretty short, with the longest trail being 1/2 mile long. The suggested amount of time for this short trail was one hour. I was pretty sure that Arizona State Parks had grossly underestimated my kids, but two hours seemed to be minimum amount of time needed for a decent hike.


Destination: Tonto Natural Bridge
Driving time (from Phoenix): <2 hours
Time hiking: 2+ hours
Distance: 1-2 miles
Cost: $22 for a family of 5 (depending on kids ages)



My kids loved the hike. There was a lot of scrambling up rocks, sliding down rocks, watching daddy grab his chest because he thought he was going to have a heart attack because of how close the kids were getting to the edge of everything. But all three kids, ages 5, 7, and 9, did a phenomenal job on the trails, with almost no complaints.

The Natural Bridge itself was amazing. While my hope is to inspire Arizonans to visit (or non Arizonans to come to Arizona to experience our breathtaking beauty), I won't go into the details of why the Tonto Natural Bridge is truly spectacular. However, I can say that it is amazing to walk over and through this natural wonder. The kids loved looking at the rock formations, the caves, and the waterfalls. It was truly beautiful.

Let's go back for a minute to the daddy heart attack. My kids were being kids. They were exploring and having fun. They weren't doing anything reckless, or dangerous, or careless, nor would I allow them to. But in my mind, every step was the one that caused them to careen down the rocks into the icy pool under the bridge. Or the one that made them slip and fall and break an arm. And then I saw my younger self, my 9 year old self, in my daughter's exploration, and I remember my dad telling me about all of the grey hairs that we caused him (cue The Cat's in the Cradle now). So dad, I'm sorry. I now understand.

But my hope is that in letting my kids explore and have fun and, yes, give their daddy some grey hairs, they will grow up to be independent risk takers. They will hopefully look for opportunities that others might shy away from, but, because I let them crawl around on some rocks or slide down some boulders, they will take those opportunities and those risks.

So this is hopefully the first of many posts that will be about exploring the great state of Arizona. I'm hoping that my family and I can begin to travel to various sites around the state, both known and unknown, and inspire both ourselves and our readers to go explore. Be on the lookout for more articles on great places In the Backyard.

Until then, stay safe, remember to breathe, pack plenty of water, and let the kids be explorers in the great outdoors.

We're Almost There, Even When We're Not: Lessons in Perseverance from a Hike

This past weekend my family and I went on a hike. My father-in-law was visiting, and we needed a way to work off our post-Thanksgiving sluggishness. I found a trail that, in all of my years living in Arizona, I had never heard of. It is called the Hieroglyphic Trail in Gold Canyon, Arizona, and the trail ends with many petroglyphs (and I learned something. Hieroglyphs are paintings or drawings on rocks, while petroglyphs are carvings into rocks. But I still don't know why a trail with petroglyphs is named after hieroglyphs). While I did not read anything about the distance of the trail, several hikers had written about this being an easy hike for kids. So we decided to fill up some water bottles, pack up the family truckster, and head to Gold Canyon to see some petroglyphs.

It was a beautiful winter day in Arizona. While most of the country was dealing with snow, we had an overcast 74 degree day with some wind - perfect for hiking. We started off, and the kids ran ahead, excited to see ancient Native American carvings. Since we had three adults and three kids, we divided and conquered, and I powered ahead with my eight-year-old, blazing the trail for the rest of the family.

Just keep hiking, just keep hiking...

After 45 minutes, the kids were done. We had gone about a mile, mostly uphill. They hadn't eaten in more than 50 minutes, and in my house that is when the kids begin to think about eating grass, leaves, dirt, or anything else they can get their hands on. I started giving shoulder rides, turning into daddy mule, trying to keep spirits up. I asked somebody walking back towards us how close we were, and she said that we were about halfway there.

Yikes!

Cool petroglyphs at the end

Halfway there, running low on snacks, kids wearing out. So when they asked me if we were almost there, I said what every dad in the history of fatherhood has said at some point in his life. "Yes, we are almost there. Let's keep going." We bribed with gum ("If you're positive for 10 minutes you each get a piece of gum."). We joked. We told stories. And the second mile, also uphill, felt like it went so much quicker.

When we got to the end of the two mile hike, the petroglyphs were amazing. There was fascinating detail, which I almost missed due to the constant near heart attacks from kids almost falling down the rocks. We sat and finished off our food while I wondered if my kids were going to resort to cannibalism during the two mile hike back. And we talked about how much easier heading back would be because it was mostly downhill.

During the hike back, I thought about what we would have missed if we had turned back when we were told that we were only halfway there. How would my kids have reacted if I had told them we weren't even close? We still would have had a good hike, but we would have missed out on some really cool history, as well as all of the great family time that we had.

A nap at the end...

We pushed through on the hike, and we got to see some really cool things. We continually tell our kids that they can do hard things. And the fact that my eight-, six-, and four-year-old all hiked four miles was definitely a really hard thing. I hope that my kids will apply this perseverance to life whenever difficulties present themselves.

So if you're ever in the Phoenix are and you're looking for a great hike, check out the Hieroglyphic Trail. Make sure to pack up plenty of snacks, plenty of water, and brush up on your cadence songs and knock knock jokes, because you'll need all of this on the hike.

...And a nap on the way back.

And remember, in the grand scheme of things, "we're almost there" can always be used, because any distance can be considered short, depending on what it's compared to.

Arizona Railway Museum: Cheap Fun for the Whole Family

As a parent, I sometimes feel like I have stale ideas. I usually have the same ideas: take the kids to the zoo, take them out for ice cream, or go on a long bike ride with them. I find it difficult to stretch out and find new things to do.

And then a couple of weeks ago I was driving home from work and I noticed quite a few train cars off of the beaten path. I investigated and discovered the Arizona Railway Museum. I knew that I had to take the kids and check it out.