Welcome to our family adventure travelogue. For those of you who don't know us, we're Peter, Lori, Nic (9) and Miki (7). We like to document our family holidays (aka vacations for the USA crowd) to help other families to plan their travels with kids.

On this driving tour, we leave Southern California for overnight stays in Needles CA, Sedona AZ, Grand Canyon AZ, Boulder City NV and Calico Ghost Town CA. Special attractions along the way included Oatman AZ, Meteor Crater, Deer Farm and the Calico Ghost Town.

Before we get started a couple of points. We've noticed that some Ad Blocker Privacy software (e.g. Zone Labs) causes animated graphics and graphics or links that open in a new window to not appear. Some of our thumbnail photos expand to a larger 640x480 photo in a new window so you don't lose your place. You can set the privacy level to selectively allow this or add www.organicsofoz.com to the zone list not to block. This site does not use pop-up, pop-under or other nasty ad-ware. Also, we include convenient links to other sites in new windows which provide useful information about the trip or areas we visit.

Wildlife Scavenger Hunt

We've also included a special page with all of the animals we sighted and were able to photograph. To keep the kids interested in seeing the sights rather than playing the gameboys, we had a daily contest for spotting wildlife. The prize was bragging rights.

You got points for being the first to spot an animal so long as you pointed it out to another person to see it also. You can not count the same species twice in a day. If there were 2 deer, both kids could claim one each. Butterflies could be counted so long as they were different (e.g. yellow ones and white ones).

We set up a simple points system based on the probablity of spotting an animal.

The game was amusing and infectious with members of our tour group getting involved requesting us for points for spotting lizards and eagles. One member even claimed 50 points in the Grand Canyon Caverns for the mummified bobcat.

Free Downloads

We took some of our best shots and made them into screen backgrounds. They're scattered throughout the pages and are free to download for personal use, but like all photography, they are copyright. If you want to use one commercially, just ask - we'll probably be flattered.