Balthazar in Arizona A good kid vacation. Balthazar logged around 70 hiking miles over three weeks. He did many hikes in this vast desert playground studded with improbable rock formations striated many shades of red and ochre with names like Chimney Rock and Cathedral Rock that tower a thousand feet high. He did vertical hikes, flat loops, and hikes up stream beds in his water shoes, stopping to swim in deep eddies along the way. He saw lizards by the hundreds, snakes, giant yellow butterflies, and a spider whose abdomen was swaddled in what looked like crimson velour. In the streams he saw trout and fresh water crayfish. Balthazar can hike forever if you can keep his mind off it. He usually accomplishes this himself by asking us millions of questions about when we were kids, or by pretending that the three of us are riders in the Tour de France and we're jockeying for position. He plays a rider and the race announcer simultaneously.
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