Guess what season it is?

Well, it's summer. For the next 12 hours at least, and then it's friggin' fall! I was feeling a little mopey because it's still 95 degrees here and none of the trees are the kind that turn bright red and orange, but then I read this little article and it kicked my butt into gear. Tucson, suck it. I'm ready for this freaky-assed harvest.

Tucson seems to be taking pity on me though, if only just a bit, because the high tomorrow is 82. Eighty-two! Can you believe it? That's practically freezing. AND, there are supposed to be thunderstorms all day. I might just whip out a scarf. Also, pumpkins and gourds and squashes are showing up in all the grocery stores, even though I'm probably the only one that would dream of baking pies and stuffed squash in this heat. I plan on buying a ridiculous amount, though, and putting them all over my apartment so that people can come over and think, "Hey, it might be too hot to even use the outdoor unheated pool comfortably, but it's definitely fall in here". Maybe I'll even crank up the AC to make it more convincing.


Here's the deal though. I've got this whole slew of summer recipes that I haven't gotten around to posting yet. Some of them I could probably sneak into the first few weeks of fall, but others are going to sound ridiculous to all you people who live in normal climates where seasons actually occur. So, I'm going to be posting a few recipes in rapid succession over the next couple days, and THEN I'm gonna go all gourd-stuffing, bread-baking, pumpkin-carving crazy.

Before I get to that, though, I want to wrap up some of the coolest moments from this summer, including this past weekend which was a great way to tie it all together. Ready? Alright, let me scrounge for some sweet pics. (Most of these I didn't actually take, which is why they aren't of the usual Nikon D40 quality. I still dig 'em though.)

I kicked off the summer by hosting a big ass park party at Granite Creek Park in Prescott, just a week and a half after I came back from Portland. So many people came! It was crazy.
Here some of us are, cashing in on the awesome food. It was supposed to be a potluck, but somehow basically only me and stew actually brought homemade stuff (like the killer potato salad I'm scooping into)

One of my favorite things about summer is getting to be outdoors all the time! In Arizona this also means getting really hot and sunburned at the same time, but it's all worth it.
This was the first camping trip of the summer and we went to clear creek, a place my family went regularly while I was growing up. I look a little chubby- probably from all those marshmallows!

When we're tired of camping but still want to go to a swimming hole, we hit up frog falls. It's a small spot about 20 minutes away from my house that's only full during summer... it's a lot of fun though and we went four or five times over summer.
This is from a girls trip!

Of course, there were also times when we didn't feel like swimming in river water at all. None of us have access to a pool, but living in one place for the first 18 years of your life, you learn a few things.
This pool is really easy to sneak into during broad daylight, and a lot of times we have it all to ourselves!

I mentioned in an earlier post that I take a yearly vacation to California during mid July. This year I hung out with my sister...
...and one of stewart's and my best friends, Marby!
Hey look... I'm wearing a scarf here and it's Los Angeles during July! Interesting...

Aside from camping and sneaking into pools, we also went to the salt river a bunch of times. The river is really great because you can rent a tube for 15 bucks and float down lazily with four or five friends for about six hours with a cooler of sandwiches and beer. It's a really cheap, fun, outdoorsy way to spend a summer day.
This is in the car on the way to the river the second time we went. I can't wait to go next year!

This year, me and 5 girlfriends all went down to Phoenix and stayed in the Pointe Hilton for 3 days. It was sooo much fun. The Pointe Hilton has a whole water park that guests can get into for free. We spent all of 3 days there, getting crazy tan.
We met an off duty lifeguard one of the days and that night he showed us a community pool a couple blocks away that was easy to sneak into. It was super fun, but I got stung by a scorpion while getting out! My finger was numb for like a week after that.

Of course, one of the best parts of my summer was the awesome job I managed to get at the beginning. I worked at Mama Edda's, a gourmet pizza place downtown and met some of the coolest people EVER. I can't wait to go back and kick it with them again.
My mom took this picture of me and one of my best friends, Natalie, sitting at an edda's booth downtown and giving out free samples of pizza for Prescott Idol. This was one of my last days of work!

And finally, last weekend. What was it? The VW festival! Stewart and I skipped our thursday and friday classes and road tripped up to Prescott. We went out to dinner with my parents, stopped in at Edda's to visit, and hung out with Natalie until the wee hours of the morning. The next day, Stewie and I got up and took another hour long trip to Jerome, a little mountain-side ghost town where the festival was being held. We camped with Stewart's brother Brian, our friend Margaret, and a couple of Brian's older friends for three days. We got to see a TON of old volkswagen buses, bugs, golfs, and even a couple things. Here are a couple of my favorites.

We had a lot of fun, even though the heat from the sun woke us up at 7 am every morning. I can't wait to go to next year's VW fest. It's definitely going to become an end of summer tradition!

Well, there you have it. There is a lot of stuff left out because none of us remembered to take pictures... But that's basically what my summer was full of. Now you know why I didn't blog for 3 months! I'll probably be back later in the day with a summery recipe for you. I hope your days are brisk and your markets are full of squash... wear a cardigan for me!

Love,
MSoSS