A Rainy Day At The Lake

There aren't a lot of standing bodies of water in my part of the country. Okay, our neighborhood does have a lake, but it's totally man-made and artificial-looking (at least it's pretty and has a nice jogging trail).

However, there is another large-ish body of water not too far from our home; it's Lake Patagonia, just a short drive outside of Nogales, Arizona (the town straddles the international border, but the lake is entirely on the US side). Technically, this lake is also man-made, but it was formed when a creek was dammed, so I find that a shade more "natually occurring" than the "dug a hole in the ground" variety of lake I usually see around here.

Oddly enough, our family had never visited Lake Patagonia before, in all our years of living in this area. I thought it might be a fun adventure for the family to take a trip there during the summer. I decided to do just a day-trip for our first visit, to scope out the park and see if a longer trip would be an option in the future.

Apparently, I am a persuasive person, because after I shared my idea with a few friends, they all thought a lake trip was a good idea too. Such a good idea, in fact, that they got the word out to about a dozen other families, and before I knew it, the lake trip had become a multi-family affair. In fact, of the seven families that ended up going, three of the families ended up doing me one better, by camping next to the lake the night before the rest of us arrived! We had no problem with the trip becoming more large-scale, though. Quite the opposite: we were excited to spend time with our friends in a new, exciting location!

The drive to the lake was simple enough; it ended up being about an hour and fifteen minutes. The elevation at Patagonia Lake State Park is higher than that of Sahuarita by nearly 1,000 feet, so the temperature was noticeably cooler when we arrived.

The lake was at a pretty low level; the picnic areas were all some distance from the water line on the day of our trip. June had been a particularly hot month, and this may have contributed to the low levels. However, there was still enough water to splash around in, and the kids took full advantage!

That tiny blond head in the water is Lorelai, swimming her heart out for the opposite shore.

The lake was a good opportunity for the girls to put their new-found swimming skills to good use; in fact, Lorelai and her friend Sydney managed to swim clear to the opposite end of the lake (with some flotation assistance, but mostly through sheer force of will). They spent their time on the opposite shore diving off the large rocks into the deeper water, and worrying both their mothers who waited anxiously back at the picnic site.

Everyone brought their own picnic lunch (the campers had made a large dinner together the night before), and the kids somehow found time to eat some food in between splashing around and digging for "seashells."

Probably the most exciting event of the day for my girls was a trip out onto the lake in the inflatable canoe, brought by our friends the Carlsens:

Hopefully, if we are extra nice to the Carlsen family, they will let us borrow their awesome boat next time we come to the lake as well! Maybe I will make them cookies or wash their car or something.

Here I am, chillin', right before all the craziness began.

Right as we sat down to eat lunch, things got very interesting., thanks to the miracle of the Arizona monsoon. There had been clouds in the sky all morning, but we'd managed to ignore them. Around midday, those clouds moved in quickly, making sure to be noticed! We heard some thunder roll, and then (with no other warning) the rain started coming down. We scrambled for shelter, and some things got left behind. Our girls forlornly watched a forgotten flotation "noodle" as it floated alone across the lake, battered by the rain. Who knows if it was ever rescued?

Did it ever pour! Thankfully, our well-prepared camping friends had set up canopies lakeside, and most of us managed to huddle beneath them for a while while finishing off our (now somewhat soggy) lunches. Then we waited for a little while...and the rain started falling harder. And we started hearing more thunder, and this started to make some of the littler kids cry. And then the older kids started to want to get in the car. And the adults all decided that it was time for everyone to make a break for it.

It was quite the messy, wet, muddy retreat to the cars when we all decided to flee. The rain was coming down so hard I could barely see from all the water dripping into my eyes. Plus, Celeste had to run all the way through the parking lot with one shoe on, because we'd lost her other one (luckily, we found it in a rain-sodden pile of supplies before we left). Once the girls were safely in the car, drying off and changing into what few dry clothes we had left, I was forced to make a few more wet, slippery trips down the hill towards the lake, to pick up our cooler and all the rest of our supplies.

The rain tapered off for a bit just before we left the lake, but all the families had come to the unspoken conclusion that we'd all had enough fun, and it was time to head home. In fact, the intrepid camping families had been rained on twice; there had also been an intense storm the night before, which made some tents leak and made lots of the littlest campers wake up terrified and crying. I felt bad for them, but was also inwardly relieved I'd just decided to come for the day. If I ever camp overnight at Lake Patagonia, I'll be sure not to do it during the monsoon season!

The storm followed us home; rain poured on the car for the majority of our return drive. Even though we were safe inside our air-conditioned car, seeing so much rain (for us dry-weather people) made us somehow feel as if we were still wet, even after an hour and a half of driving. When we finally got home and peeled ourselves out of our seats, we spent a long time hauling in all our wet gear, drying ourselves off, and resting from our crazy trip. But we all agreed it was a fun, exciting adventure we'd like to try again soon. Some of our friends are already planning another trip in October. Maybe we'll join them...and maybe we'll even camp overnight this time!!