We went back to Arizona for our second annual Lost Dutchman Marathon. Actually, Judy is the one that runs the marathon, and the rest of us do something else. Last year, we went to breakfast and showed up in time to watch Judy finish the race. This year, I was the lone spectator, and the kids both ran the 8K trail run. Of course, they have official photographers on the course to document the event. You can see the pictures here. Order one, if you would like. You can even get a $65 poster shot. I took photographs of the events, and some of the other things that we did along the way.
Arizona is a great place to visit in the winter. We found a house to rent at the base of the Superstition mountains, which is where the marathon starts. The course runs from the Peralta trailhead and down to US60. There are fires at the start to keep the runners warm. I was looking forward to watching the runners go by at mile 5, but the kids decided they wanted to try the 8K trail run, so as soon as I dropped Judy off to get the bus to the start, off we went for the kids race. The weather was really nice for running, cool and overcast for most of the day. Everyone had a good run, and Ian ended up with a third place in his age division. The top three boys 10-14 finished as a group of three within 8 seconds of each other.
After recovering from the race in the morning, we started our actual vacation which included hiking in the Superstition Mountains. We made it up to Freemont Saddle with a spectacular view of Weaver's needle. We did quite a bit of running and made our second annual mountain biking loop around the Pemberton Trail in the McDowell Mountain Regional Park. There was snow on the peaks in the background.
We also made a trip to Sedona on our relaxing day for the vacation. The scenery was gorgeous. We had a wonderful meal at the Oak Creek Brewery and Grill. We visited some of the fine art shops and saw some really interesting (and expensive) art. Our favorite place was the El Prado Gallery which had a great variety of kinetic art and the most comfortable stone chairs that we had ever seen. We went for a drive up the mountain to see some of the snow and check out the trails. What a great place. Next time, we spend some more time on the trails and less time in the galleries, just not our thing.
Overall, we had a great trip and had many things left that we would have liked to accomplish, but they will have to wait for the third annual LDM trip. One of the kids homework assignments for winter break was to track their physical activity during the week. Needless to say, they both did really well with that assignment.
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