Most days I feel like I am wearing too many hats. As a mom, and a wife with a full time job in addition to helping Kris with the photo business I am often stretched really, really thin… and not in that, “my clothing fits great” way… in that I lost my keys and found them in the door knob way.

The solution of course would be to give something up, simplify life, do less, but luckily just when I reach the point that I’m ready to take the leap and let something go, wearing all these hats allows me to do something really cool.

Last week was one of those weeks. My day job sent me to Tuscon Arizona for 2 1/2 days. On this trip, my rental car GPS took me about an hour into the middle of southwestern America’s desert.

Luckily, we had just gotten a brand new lens that I was dying to put to use. Taking time to soak in the heat, and capture some of the natural beauty of the desert totally recharged my batteries.

Check out those cacti, these were nearly three stories high and really old! Fun cacti trivia for the day: this type of cacti is typically 60 years old before it gets its first ‘arm’ and they can live to over 200 years old. This area was full of them.

If you ever get a chance to spend some time in the area around Tuscon, I would highly recommend it. But take your tripod, I wish I had, the night sky is AMAZING and I only wish I had the foresight to bring mine and take some time for some awesome star trail photographs. At least it gives me an excuse to go back!