The Adventures of Me and My New Shoes

Hey, good morning, blog friends!
♥.

What a fun and busy weekend it was for me! I spent some time with my girl while Doug was away on a camping trip with his brothers, and I also enjoyed some time outside during a bit of a cold spell here. Well, not really a "cold spell," but not so stinking hot that you couldn't go outdoors for a while.

One of the perks of being me is that on occasion, OnlineShoes.com will send me some free shoes in exchange for posting a review on my blog. They recently sent me a cute pair of hiking boots and I needed to test them out, so yesterday morning I got up bright and early and headed over to Hole-in-the-Rock near the Phoenix Zoo.

The Phoenix Zoo is about a 20 minute drive from our house. It's cool that this place is smack in the middle of the Phoenix metropolitan area - a little piece of nature surrounded by the city. We had a thunder storm roll through on Saturday night, and even though I was disappointed to see clouds still hanging around on Sunday morning, it was actually to my benefit. I'd much rather be climbing this little mountain with clouds and 81° than blue skies and 100°+.

The trail leads up and around to the back side of this mountain, and it's so cool to reach the top and finally peer through the opening of the hole in the rock, revealing the zoo grounds and the city of Phoenix in its jagged frame.

Oh...here...let me show you the cute hiking boots that OnlineShoes.com sent me. I love that these are not your standard brown hiking boots. Aren't they cute? They were really nice to hike in too - great traction on the soles and solid ankle support...

I was mostly alone during my time at Hole-in-the-Rock, save for a family with four small children who came and climbed around for a while. Once they had left I perched my phone on some rocks and took several shots using the self-timer. It is a miracle that A) my phone didn't tumble down the face of this rock mountain; and B) I didn't tumble down the face of this rock mountain. My timer was set for 15 seconds, and each time I scurried over to my set point just in time to beat the shot. As you'll see in this next photo, I was able to take a nice shot (took about 10 of them), but hello? This is a post about the shoes and you can't even see them in any of my self-timer shots!

I decided to call it quits and head back down to my car. Just as I was leaving, a young couple had reached the top and I offered to take their photo, then asked if they'd take a couple of me. I explained to them that I'm a blogger and was doing a review of these boots, and it turns out that the young lady is a blogger too. It was fun to meet another local blogger, and you can see her blog by clicking here.

So, yeah. There's a shot of the super cute hiking boots, thanks to OnlineShoes.com. And here's a photo of me, thanks to the nice couple I met on the mountain...

The absence of sunshine and blue skies did make for some pretty photos, don't you think?

A big thanks to OnlineShoes.com for the really nice hiking boots! They're fantastic boots and I know I will get a lot of great use out of them. I also want to mention that OnlineShoes.com has outstanding customer service - they are just fantastic to work with, and I hope to have future opportunities with them as well. I did receive these boots free of charge in exchange for a review on my blog. All opinions of these boots are my own. :o)

The final week of July 2014 is on our horizon.

Make the most of it, my friends!

♥