AZ Tattoo Expo

A few weeks ago I covered the AZ Tattoo Expo for the College Times which took place at the Mesa Convention Center. Jayare and the other guys from Idle Hands Tattoo were also there! It was really cool to get to hang out with them over the weekend!

Joe Tower of Idle Hands Tattoo in Mesa.

My beautiful friend, Marsha Diaz.

Marsha's sleeve by: Joe Tower

Contestants' half sleeve is examined by the judges.

Back pieces by Timo of 5th Estate Tattoo in Gilbert.

Lisa Siciliano gets tattooed by Drew Siciliano of Ink Therapy in Glendale.

Melissa Marjors gets several piercings for a corset.

Melissa Majors with a dagger corset. 

Skull and Anchor corsets by Chris "Waffles" Niel of Hotrod Tattoo in Chandler.

Sporting my newly thrifted crop top! Outfit details in this post.

Full sleeve by Mikey Sarratt of High Noon Tattoo in Phoenix...

...and here's the inside of the arm.

Dave Zielinski with a back piece by Dan Hazleton.

Suspension show by Steve Haworth & Life Suspended.

Wish List: Mercantile

About a month ago, I visited Mercantile, a unique vintage clothing shop/hair salon, in Phoenix. I found so many cute things in the shop so I made a Local Wish List for the College Times! The feature was published in the April 25th issue (you can see the entire issue HERE). Today, I'm sharing some of my favorite things from Mercantile. 

Earrings and Tie Clips, $6 - $12

Aztec bag, $46

Tea time dress, $42 // Pink printed dress, $42

Belts, $6 - $20

Silver earrings (by SMASH) $210

Plaid skirt, $35

Woven bag, $15

Wedges, $46

Pocahontas dress, $42 // Necklace, $12

More from Haunted Canyon Trail

Yay! It's Friday!! The week flew by and the weekend is here! I have a fun assignment with the College Times scheduled this weekend with Elle of Living in Color, but I'll share more about that later. 

Today, I'm sharing more photographs from our backpacking trip. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Backpacking at Haunted Canyon Trail

Jayare, Damien and I completed our very first backpacking trip! We even brought Nietzsche and Sposs along to join us. It was a challenge for us all, but we did it. It was super rewarding and I'm excited to get the opportunity to go on another backpacking trip.

We decided to go back to Haunted Canyon Trail for our trip. I shared our experience from the hike we took there last fall. We really enjoyed the hike and because we were familiar with the trail, we knew there wouldn't be any unexpected surprises.  

We each had our own backpacks to carry. Even the dogs!

The Superstition Mountains at Tonto National Forest.

The trailhead was super easy to find with all the posted signs. 

Look at how happy Sposs was! Do you see the road closed sign behind him? This is where we had to park our car. The road leading to the trailhead was closed so we had to hike a mile and a half on a dirt road before beginning the actual trail. 

Damien's backpack weighed about 15 lbs. and he was complaining of it being too heavy so I took on some of the weight that he had. My bag weighed about 28 lbs. and Jayare's weighed about 35 lbs. 

This is at the beginning of the trailhead. We were already exhausted at this point!

The hike starts out by going through really tall grass, then up the mountain and then back down. We were in direct sunlight for another mile and a half. It was hot and we were tired, especially the dogs! It was such a relief to get to the stream! 

The dogs cooled off in the stream too!

The stream was pretty cold, but Damien will take any opportunity that he can to go swimming!

This photo was taken at the same spot where we took the photo with the leaves in front of our faces from our last hike at Haunted Canyon Trail.

I read this post on cairns after our hike. There were a couple of times where the trail would cross through the stream and we weren't sure where to go, but one of us would spot a cairn and that would help us stay on track. Next time I pass a cairn that helps me, I'll be sure to add a stone!

We made it to camp! We didn't hike the entire trail. We only hiked about 3.5 or 4 miles of it, but it was exhausting! As soon as we found a safe place to camp, we set our tents up and gathered rocks and wood for a campfire.

Our campsite was absolutely gorgeous! It was so relaxing to be out in the wilderness. This is looking upstream.

This is looking downstream.

There were spiders everywhere so we named it "Spider Creek".

Once the sun started setting, we set up a campfire. It got dark really fast! And kinda spooky too! You hear noises out there and you're not really sure what it is or where it came from. I was ready to go to bed and pretend that I couldn't hear anything.

As soon as we woke up the next morning, we packed everything up and headed back. I took a ton of video from the hike and I hope to edit it and put it all together in a fun little video montage. I'll share that with you all as soon as it's finished.

I highly recommend Haunted Canyon Trail! It's definitely not for beginners. We aren't experts by any means, but we are an active family and it was still tough for us. There are a lot of ups and downs when hiking alongside the mountain. At times, Damien was a little afraid when we were hiking on the mountainside because it's steep and there's somewhat of a dropoff. It wasn't unsafe, but I wouldn't recommend it for an inexperienced, young hiker.

If you have any questions about the hike, feel free to leave a comment below or shoot me an email: ALesoing {at} gmail {dot} com.