Pumpkin Cheesecakes And The Great Outdoors, In That Order

Yet another busy weekend in this month of October. It's becoming a common theme. Luckily, this weekend was pretty fun as well as busy.

Thursday night was Nathan's annual company picnic, held at Reid Park in Tucson. Each year, a dessert bake-off is held, with the winner receiving a good-sized gift basket. Last year, the big winner was me...thanks to my yummy Berries On A Cloud dessert. The pressure was on to repeat this year, so I decided to scour the internet for another great dessert idea. Here's what I came up with:

It's a two-layer pumpkin pie/toffee cheesecake, with a cinnamon graham-cracker crust and fresh whipped cream topping. I got the recipe from Our Best Bites, a wonderful cooking blog. And yes, it was as delicious as you'd expect.

HOWEVER: I had to settle for second place this year (by one point--d'oh!!). One reason may be my late arrival; I didn't make it to the picnic until it had been going for about an hour. By then, several people had already cast their votes without ever tasting my yummy cheesecake. Also, the champion this year made a cake with Nutella-infused frosting. And I have to admit: if I'd had time to vote, I may still have voted for that dessert, because Nutella anything is a-okay by me.

But in spite of missing out on the big prize this year (a Honey-Baked Ham store gift certificate), we still had fun at the company picnic. The catered dinner was nice, the company pleasant, and the girls got to see a bunch of ducks at the nearby lake. Plus, my cheesecake was eaten right up...all that was left was one small piece for me to finish off the following day. In a way, that was just as satisfying as a victory...seeing that people enjoyed what I brought!

The very next day, we packed up and headed up to the mountains. Our ward (the Sahuarita First Ward) was holding its annual camp-out, at the LDS Church-owned camp high up Mount Lemmon, which is a good hour and a half drive from home. We were excited to go up; last year's camp-out was a lot of fun, and there were no fire restrictions this year, which meant campfire!

We actually got to cook our dinner this year, as opposed to last year's "feast" of cold sandwiches. Of course, since we are such novice campers, we stuck to hot dogs & marshmallows...the "easy" stuff.

It was great to sit around the fire toasting our dinner (of course, the hot dogs were slightly chilled inside but that's camp food for you).

The girls entertained themselves as the sun went down visiting their friends' campsites...

...or telling ghost stories!

We pitched our tent a little apart from everyone else...not because we wanted to avoid people, but because we wanted the campsite's south view, which overlooks the whole city:

Beautiful!

This was a much smaller ward camp-out; fewer families participated, and so our evening consisted of casual socializing, and a short game at the amphitheater. We were really enjoying ourselves...

...until it was time to go to sleep. As you may have noticed from the picture of our tent above, we kind of forgot to bring the rainfly for our tent, so we were left exposed to the night air. We could see the stars through our roof, which sounds very romantic until you remember we were sleeping under nothing but blankets outside on a 40-degree night. Yeah, we are definitely amateur campers! We ended up desperately snuggling together for warmth throughout the night, and Nathan and I woke up pretty miserable (although the kids seemed none the worse for wear. Darn resilient children making us look bad!). I think this was finally the event that taught Nathan and I that we need proper sleeping bags, and maybe some foam pads as well Let's hope we remember this lesson.

Despite our chilly night, we still had a nice morning with our friends. After a small breakfast, and after breaking the tent and loading up the car, we drove a little further up the mountain to a trail near Marshall Gulch. Since we had about 12-15 kids running around everywhere, we didn't go too far. However, we got to see some beautiful fall color along the way!

I sometimes forget that such places actually exist in Arizona. I miss fall more than any of the other seasons since moving to Tucson, so this was a welcome sight to my desert-weary eyes.

After reluctantly saying goodbye to the mountain beauty, we loaded everyone into the car and headed back down Mount Lemmon...and towards home. I think we gained a lot of valuable experience this weekend; we learned that we need better camping gear, and we learned where to catch a little break from the heat! Marshall Gulch is now on our "to-visit-again" list.

See you on the other side of Halloween!