Centipedes and spiders and bears, oh my!

Friday was a pretty interesting day.  Dave had the day off, so after a long morning getting some house
business taken care of we took a nap with the little kids. Ellie woke me up after an hour or so announcing that there was a snake in the backyard. We went downstairs to see what was up, but it was not a snake. It turned out to be a Giant Arizona Centipede- way scarier in my opinion than a snake and venomous too. Luckily this thing was half-dead, twitching his legs a little but not putting up any fight. Dave put his hand by it to compare size- he has really big hands and this bug was easily 6 inches long if not longer. It literally made me sick to my stomach to even look at and I am not usually squeamish. I made Dave take it to the trash can.

In the afternoon an kind friend offered to take our kids so Dave and I could go on a date. We decided to go hiking up Madeira canyon in the Santa Rita Mountains not far from our house. It was a great hike - it had rained earlier in the day so it was a little humid but there were hardly any other people around. We got about a mile up the trail and Dave mentioned that he saw someone ahead on the trail. We rounded the corner and not 150 feet away was not someone but something! It was a beautiful black bear! I got a few quick pictures before he huffed and wuffled and loped up the ridge. It was so beautiful and amazing to be that close to a critter that big in the wild. I was sad that I had the wrong lens on on my camera to get really good shots but wow! What a neat experience! We decided to hike the other direction away from the bear and warned a family hiking farther down the trail that they might not want to go that way either. From what I understand black bears are pretty timid and shy but we wanted to play it safe. We ended hiking to the top of a different ridge and enjoyed a picnic and some pretty great views.














Our last wild adventure happened on the way home. As we drove down the canyon Dave suddenly slammed on the breaks and swerved the car around. We got out and saw this huge male tarantula on the road. Once again you notice it's Dave's hand by it, not mine. I've always wanted to see a tarantula in the wild so I was pretty happy. We used a stick to flick it off the road so it wouldn't get run over and headed home. All in all a pretty great date and a pretty great day.